luca

name

1. A male given name from Italian, borrowed in the 2000s.
2. A female given name.

   “This is my bedroom, and Luca’s, and Fran’s, and my mother’s. The four of us sleep here, and at the back of the house live Celesta and Rose, my other two sisters who I don’t really know. […] We are Celesta, Rosaria, Francesca, Luca, Dolores.”

   “Miss Lori, my girlfriend is on the phone. Her name is Luca.”

   ““No, it wasn’t a dream, Luke….You have a daughter. […] I just assumed she was Ryan’s. I got married days after you came to Chicago….days after you and me… I’m sorry….” / “What’s her name, Drea?” […] “Luca….your daughter’s name is Luca.” / “No, no… her name is Luca Landon.” […] Luca Landon would always connect Mattdrea Cyrus to Luke Landon.”

   “Who is the playwright of the Diamond Theater responsible for these stirring stories? Her name is Luca Syara, but beyond that, she’s an enigma.”

   “I don’t know if you ever met my stepmother, Luca. […] When Luca’s husband died protecting my dad, he’d felt obligated to show his loyalty and gratitude by marrying her, adopting her sons, treating them as his own.”

noun

1. (alt-of)Alternative letter-case form of LUCA.

   “What’s more, every living organism is ultimately descended from a single ancestral population: the Last Universal Common Ancestor (Luca), which lived over 3.5 billion years ago when the planet was newly formed.”

2. (abbreviation, alt-of, initialism)Initialism of last universal common ancestor; the hypothesised most recent primordial organism that is an ancestor to all organisms now living.

   “Luca is now usually placed deep underground, in a fissure in hot igneous rocks, where she fed on sulphur, iron, hydrogen and carbon.”

   “It was around 2.9 billion years ago that LUCA split into the three domains of life: the single-celled bacteria and archaea, and the more complex eukaryotes that gave rise to animals and plants[…].”