Akiva (given name)

Akiva or Akiba is a Jewish-ethnic name, arising in Aramaic from 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