Luka

Luka is the Slavic, Croatian, and Italian form of Luke, from the Greek Loukas, probably meaning man from Lucania. In the former Yugoslavia it has been a perennial favorite for centuries. In the United States it began a sharp climb with the Dallas Mavericks' Luka Dončić and the broader move toward names ending in the open a vowel. It now sits around the top 94 for boys. Suzanne Vega's 1987 song Luka, about a child in an upstairs apartment, planted an earlier seed. The two syllables feel at once European and easy on American tongues. Luka reads as confident, athletic, a little continental, cleanly modern.