Alif
given name · Latin script
Meaning: The first letter of the Arabic alphabet: ا (ʔalif)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈalif/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Alif is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Indonesia than in any other country.
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 3K(inferred from the name graph)
- IDIndonesia≈1 in 3K
- THThailand≈1 in 47Kas อาลีฟ
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Alif itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Indonesia (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 167 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈88,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Malaysia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled อาลีฟ in TH Thailand.
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.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
The first letter of the Arabic alphabet: ا (ʔalif).
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Alif 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ID Indonesia | #327 | ≈88,000 est. | ≈1 in 3K | listed | Alif | 167 |
| BR Brazil | — | 21,140as Alef | 1 in 10K | 21K | — | — |
| MY Malaysia | #215 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 3K | — | Alif | 73 |
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 70K | listed | Alif | 12 |
| TH Thailand | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 47K | #812,700 | อาลีฟ | 47 |
| US United States | — | 321 | 1 in 1M | 281 | Alif | 63 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈250 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Alif | 18 |
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: the id-github-names register; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; the pk-muslim-names-cc0 register. 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)
Alif 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 Arabic, friendly, sociable, amicable
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
In Italian, the name of the Arabic-script letter ا
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Hausa, thousand (principally used in dates)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In French, alif (Arabic letter)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Kurdish, fodder, forage, feed
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)
- Alif Alauddinb. 1985BDBangladeshi female singer
- Alif M. Akbarb. 2010IDbadminton player
- Alif Rafsyah MauthuthihonaIDbadminton player
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)
Attested in 43 sources across 25 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 2.2K | #5,572 |
| BR Brazil | Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA) | — | 2.2K | #2,210 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 1.9K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.8K | #5,346 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2020 | 1.7K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2010 | 1.4K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2000 | 971 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 1990 | 954 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2000 | 442 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2010 | 313 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 281 | #28,137 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 141 | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Alif mean, and where does it come from?
- The first letter of the Arabic alphabet: ا (ʔalif). Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Alif?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈalif/ (IPA) for Indonesian.
- Is Alif a male or female name?
- Alif is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Alif have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 88 thousand people named Alif in Indonesia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled alif.
- How common is the name Alif?
- In the United States, the national register counted 321 people named Alif in 2020, about 1 in 1.0 million residents.
- How common is Alif compared with other names?
- In Indonesia, Alif is the 327th most common given name of 270,909 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Alif?
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/alifThe 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, “Alif” — the 327th most common given name in Indonesia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.