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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • Czech (Slíva), Belorussian, and Ukrainian : occupational name for a grower or seller of plums, or nickname for a short, round person, from Czech and Belorussian slíva, Ukrainian slyva ‘plum’.
  • In Czech it is also a nickname for a drunken man, from the idiom opilý jaho slíva ‘drunk as a plum’, the word slíva having been connected by folk etymology with slívat ‘to spill’.

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