Akiva (given name)

Akiva or Akiba is a Jewish-ethnic name, arising in Aramaic from Hebrew: יַעֲקֹב, and thus cognate to English Jacob.

Among Jews, "Ya'akov" and "Akiva" - though essentially variants of the same name - are treated as completely separate, arousing different historical and religious associations: the one recalls the Biblical Patriarch Jacob, the other relates to the Roman period Rabbi Akiva.

Akiva

• Rabbi Akiva (c. 50 – c. 135 AD), Judean religious leader
• Akiva Ehrenfeld (1923–2012), president of Kiryat Mattersdorf, Jerusalem
• Akiva Eiger (1761–1837), Polish Talmudic scholar and rabbi
• Akiva Eldar (born 1945), Israeli journalist and author
• Akiva Frankfurt (died 1597), German poet and rabbi
• Akiva Goldsman (born 1962), American writer
• Akiva Govrin (1902–1980), Israeli politician
• Akiva Grunblatt (fl. 2000s), American religious leader
• Akiva ha-Kohen (died 1496), Hungarian scholar and rabbi
• Akiva Baer ben Joseph (died 1724), Viennese Talmudist and kabbalistic writer
• Akiva Librecht (1876–1958), Israeli politician
• Akiva Nof (born 1936), Israeli politician & songwriter
• Akiva Orr (born 1931), Israeli writer & political activist
• Akiva Schaffer (born 1977), American writer & comedian
• Akiva Yosef Schlesinger (1838–1922), Hungarian Orthodox Jewish rabbi
• Akiva Tatz (fl. c. 2000), a South African religious leader & writer
• Akiva Tor, Israeli diplomat and politician
• Akiva Aryeh Weiss (1868–1947), Zionist activist, architect, and city planner
• Akiva Vroman (1912–1989), Israeli geologist
• Akiva Weingarten (born 1984), German-American liberal rabbi
• Akiva Yaglom (1921–2007), Soviet & Russian scientist

Akiba

• Akiba Eisenberg (1908–1983), Hungarian rabbi
• Akiba Lehren (1795–1876), Dutch banker
• Akiba ben Judah Loeb (18th century), German rabbi
• Akiba McKinney (born 1979), American long jumper
• Akiba Rubinstein (1882–1961), Polish-Jewish chess Grandmaster

Fictional characters

• Akiva Shtisel, main character in the television series Shtisel
• Akiva, a seraph and main character on the American fantasy novel Daughter of Smoke and Bone
• Akiva, a fictional Jewish partisan in the novel Wrath Becomes Her