Apart from being an antiquated word, 'Lave' has a certain fame as the planet from which you started in the
classic computer game
Elite. As with the other planets in the game the name was randomly-generated, and thus neither
David Braben nor
Ian Bell were trying to make a strange reference to bathing.
The in-game description for the BBC Micro version read:
"Lave is most famous for its vast rain forests and the Lavian tree grub".
Again, this text was created from sentence fragments jammed together in accordance with some rules, and Lave (which was represented in the game by a white circle on a black background) was otherwise undifferentiated from the other worlds in the game.
The planet was fleshed out and re-appeared in 'Frontier: Elite 2' (which was otherwise set in the real universe) as the hardest of one of three possible starting locations. It was located roughly 'south east' of Earth.