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’.