Cavan is an Irish boy's name derived from the Gaelic 'Cabán', which means 'wolf'. It was traditionally used as a surname but has increasingly been adopted as a given name in recent years, particularly in Ireland and other English-speaking countries with significant Irish populations. Cavan is also the name of an historic county located in the northwest of Ireland.
The name Cavan had a significant increase in popularity from the late 1980s onwards, with a notable spike in births in the years 1997 to 2002. After peaking at 77 births in 2008, there has been a steady decline in recent years, reaching as low as 28 births in both 2020 and 2021, and 30 births in 2022. Over the course of these statistics (from 1969 to 2023), there were a total of 1656 births with the name Cavan.