Luca

About Luca

Luca is the Italian and Romanian form of Luke, traditionally understood as from Lucania, a region of southern Italy. It also has a separate life as a Hungarian feminine form of Lucia, connected with light. The shared spelling brings together two different name families, while sculptor Luca della Robbia and Pixar's Luca give the masculine name artistic and cinematic associations.

Two origins and pronunciations

The masculine Luca belongs with Luke and Lucas. Its usual Italian pronunciation is LOO-kah, with stress on the first syllable; English commonly uses LOO-kuh. Luka is a related form used in several other languages, including Croatian and Serbian. Lucas and Lukas retain a final s that Luca does not have.

Hungarian feminine Luca comes instead from Lucia, the feminine form of Lucius, ultimately linked with Latin lux, light. Its Hungarian pronunciation is approximately LOO-tsaw: the c represents a ts sound. This is an established feminine tradition with its own pronunciation and history, rather than simply the masculine Italian name used for a girl. Saint Lucia, a fourth-century martyr from Syracuse, helped carry the Lucia family through Christian Europe; Hungarian Luca shares that tradition.

Luca della Robbia

Luca della Robbia was a sculptor of Renaissance Florence whose name is especially associated with glazed terracotta. His work included marble and bronze, but colored ceramic sculpture became the medium most closely linked with him and his workshop's legacy.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Madonna and Child in a Niche, dated about 1460, shows the effect particularly clearly. The figures sit within an architectural frame, with blue, white, and gold details giving definition to a small devotional image. Della Robbia developed a practice of producing such works in casts, continued by members of his family and workshop into the sixteenth century.

Luca on screen

Pixar's 2021 film Luca follows Luca Paguro, a thirteen-year-old sea monster who longs to explore the human world. On the Italian Riviera he befriends Alberto, another sea monster, and Giulia, a human girl. The seaside setting makes the Italian name part of the film's sense of place.

The story centers on friendship, discovery, and the difficulty of keeping the boys' underwater identities secret. Luca can appear human on land, but contact with water reveals his other form. Director Enrico Casarosa uses that transformation within a summer adventure built around the unfamiliar possibilities of life above the sea.

American popularity

For United States boys, Luca rose from #626 in 2000, with 297 births, to #272 in 2010, with 1,275. It reached #14 in 2025, when 8,759 boys received the name. That growth was already underway well before the Pixar film appeared.

American records also contain girls called Luca: 65 were recorded in 2025. The contemporary American rise sits alongside the name's older Italian history and the separate Hungarian feminine tradition.

How popular is Luca?

In 2025, Luca ranked #14 among boys in the United States, with 8,759 recorded uses. The U.S. birth records first list this spelling for boys in 1915; its largest annual count was 8,759 in 2025. Rankings count each spelling separately. They describe national use, so local familiarity can differ. The popularity chart shows whether the name has remained common, returned after a quieter period, or risen recently.