Chaff
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from OFr chauf/cauf, Lat calvus ‘bald’; first attested Roger le Chauf, le Cauf, Calvus 1214, 1220 Cur (Co)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/tʃæf/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Chaff is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- USUnited States
- SKSlovakia
- AUAustralia
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from OFr chauf/cauf, Lat calvus ‘bald’; first attested Roger le Chauf, le Cauf, Calvus 1214, 1220 Cur (Co)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Chaff is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, OF chauf bald (L calvus; cf. Callow). Calvus was a Roman family name, originally a byname, and was still occasionally used as a given name in Italy in the Middle Ages, so that in some cases the It. cogns. may derive from this source. Cere). Cervenka see Czerwinski
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, The inedible parts of a grain-producing plant.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, ka = ga; def. st. kei = kai, gel = gal
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
In Irish, An anglicized form of Ó Lócháin or Ó Leochain (Lohan) by supposed translation ( lóchán means chaff). It is mainly found in Co. Galway
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
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.
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 6 sources across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 112 | #137,816 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 34 | #136,957 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 11 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 7 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 5 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 4 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 4 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 4 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 3 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 3 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 3 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 3 | — |
Reference works 1
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
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 Chaff mean, and where does it come from?
- from OFr chauf/cauf, Lat calvus ‘bald’; first attested Roger le Chauf, le Cauf, Calvus 1214, 1220 Cur (Co) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Chaff?
- A machine transcription gives /tʃæf/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Chaff have the most bearers?
- Chaff is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Chaff?
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/chaffThe 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, “Chaff”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.