Chérif

given name · Latin script

Meaning: sharif

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/ʃeʁif/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Chérif is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Côte d’Ivoire than in any other country. In Tunisia it is the 14th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • TNTunisia≈1 in 861(inferred from the name graph)
  • DZAlgeria≈1 in 3.1K
  • FRFrance≈1 in 13K

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.

Côte d’Ivoire (inferred from the name graph)

≈19,000 people, est.

Sources
278 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 861 (inferred from the name graph)

Tunisia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Cherif in FR France, TN Tunisia, DZ Algeria and 3 more.

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)

sharif

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 27 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Chérif 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.

Where Chérif is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CI Côte d’Ivoire—≈19,000 est.≈1 in 1.5K4.3KChérif15
DZ Algeria#18≈14,000 est.≈1 in 3.1KlistedCherif70
TN Tunisia#14≈14,000 est.≈1 in 861—Cherif64
FR France#528≈5,400 est.≈1 in 13K2.3KCherif278
CM Cameroon#493≈3,400 est.≈1 in 8.1K—Cherif7
SN Senegal#159≈3,200 est.≈1 in 5K10Cherif35
TG Togo—≈1,600 est.≈1 in 5.3K—Chérif7
ES Spain—6011 in 83K601Cherif27

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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Chérif is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Cherif, Chèrif

  • Spanish surname13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, Argentina, United States, Tunisia

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Cherif, Čĥĕŗïf, Çhêȓȋf, Chèrif, Čhéřìf

  • French (Côte d’Ivoire) surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Côte d’Ivoire

    Also written Cherif, Chèrif

  • French (Guinea) surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Guinea

    Also written Cherif

  • Russian given name40 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Türkiye, Ukraine, Kazakhstan

    Languages: Russian, Uzbek, Ukrainian

    Also written Шериф, Шерип, Сериф, Шеріф, Cherif

  • Swahili surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Tunisia, Senegal, Morocco

    Also written Cherif

28 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

19201940196019802000Chérif Belkacem, b. 1933Chérif Souleymane, b. 1944Mahamat Zene Cherif, b. 1964Chérif Oudjani, b. 1964Chérif Touré Mamam, b. 1978Chérif Kouachi, b. 1982Chérif Ousmane Sarr, b. 1986Chérif Chekatt, b. 1989Chérif Quenum, b. 1993Cherif Younousse, b. 1995

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)

InformalBonjour Chérif,Hi Chérif, (English)

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 15 sources across 10 countries.

Official registers attesting Chérif
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)2024135#2,375

Reference works 3

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • 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 Chérif mean, and where does it come from?
sharif Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Chérif?
A machine transcription gives /ʃeʁif/ (IPA) for French.
Is Chérif a male or female name?
Chérif 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 Chérif have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 19 thousand people named Chérif in Côte d’Ivoire, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled chérif.
How common is the name Chérif?
In Spain, the national register counted 601 people named Chérif, about 1 in 83 thousand residents.
How common is Chérif compared with other names?
In Tunisia, Chérif is the 14th most common surname of 37,763 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Chérif?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ch%C3%A9rif

The 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, “Chérif” — the 14th most common surname in Tunisia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Chérif parses inside a full name →