Arif
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Çok anlayışlı ve sezgili kimse (TDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary))
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 42 countries · latest register: SSA, 2025
/aɾif/(machine-generated) Turkish · model-generated
Arif is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country. In Bangladesh it is the 31st most common given name. Arif is also written আরিফ in Bengali.
- AZAzerbaijan≈1 in 520(inferred from the name graph)
- TRTürkiye≈1 in 690few records
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 780
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- India (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 205 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 515 (inferred from the name graph)
≈300,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Azerbaijan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Arif in other scripts: Bengali
(measured from records)Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
How to pronounce Arif
- Turkish:/aɾif/(machine-generated) model-generated
- Indonesian:/ˈarif/(machine-generated) model-generated
Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Çok anlayışlı ve sezgili kimse.
Cited for this meaning 1
- TDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Arif counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | #845 | ≈300,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.9K | 1.8K | Arif | 178 |
| BD Bangladesh | #31 | ≈220,000 est. | ≈1 in 779 | listed | Arif | 127 |
| TR Türkiye | — | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 690 | — | Arif | 24 |
| PK Pakistan | #163 | ≈84,000 est. | ≈1 in 3K | listed | Arif | 131 |
| AF Afghanistan | — | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Arif | 13 |
| AZ Azerbaijan | — | ≈20,000 est. | ≈1 in 515 | 441 | — | 10 |
| US United States | — | 2,389 | 1 in 139K | 2.6K | Arif | 205 |
| XK Kosovo | — | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 981 | 2.7K | — | 2 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search); Azerbaijan Ministry of Justice — Civil Registry Name Statistics. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Arif is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, männl. Vom. türkischer Herkunft (türk. arif »weise« aus gleichbedeutend arab. ‘a rif).
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
learned; knowledgeable.
as a nameMuslim baby names (our 2,000 meaningful and beautiful names for boys and girls) English-Urdu with Roman
Chief, one who
as a nameDictionary of Islamic Names
knowledgeable
as a nameWhats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names
In crh, letter (of the alphabet), character (written or printed symbol or letter)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Arif Mardinb. 1932TRTurkish-American record producer (1932–2006)
- Arif Alvib. 1949PK13th President of Pakistan from 2018 to 2024
- Arif Erdemb. 1972TRTurkish association football player (born 1972)
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them
(machine-generated)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)82 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 42 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- How do you pronounce Arif?
- It depends on the language: in Turkish /aɾif/; in Indonesian /ˈarif/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- What does the name Arif mean?
- Recorded meaning: Çok anlayışlı ve sezgili kimse.
- Is Arif a male or female name?
- Arif is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: Kosovo (ASK Kosovo), United States (Census Bureau, 2020), Albania (INSTAT Albania) and Norway (SSB), among others.
- What are other forms of the name Arif?
- In the etymology graph, Aref is a form of the same name in other languages.
- Which countries have the most people named Arif?
- Mondonomo estimates about 296 thousand people named Arif in India, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled arif. After it come Bangladesh, Türkiye, Pakistan and Afghanistan; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Arif?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,389 people named Arif in 2020, about 1 in 139 thousand residents.
- How common is Arif compared with other names?
- In India, Arif is the 845th most common given name of 3,760,348 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Arif?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/arifThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Arif” — ranked 3458th in India (Instate). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.