Fife
loc · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Fife is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in Italy. Recorded meaning: Person from the former kingdom of Fife, eastern Scotland.
- ITItaly
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.
- Italy (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 71 (measured from records)
no count published
Highest-authority source
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
Person from the former kingdom of Fife, eastern Scotland.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Fife counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts); ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Fife 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 English, from Fife, Scotland; first attested Ele de Fyfe 1296 CalSc (Fife)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
Transferred use of the Scottish surname, which originated in the Middle Ages as a local name for someone from the Kingdom (now region) of Fife. In Gaelic legend this is said to get its name from the legendary Pictish hero Fib, one of the seven sons of Cruithne. Variant: Fyfe. 88 French nursery form of jJoséphine. In the English-speaking world it now has definite connotations of frivolity.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, A small shrill pipe, resembling the piccolo flute, used chiefly to accompany the drum in military music
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, A man from Fife.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In English, kolé
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
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)
- George Fife Angasb. 1789AUAustralian politician (1789-1879)
- William Fife IIIb. 1857GBScottish yacht designer (1857-1944)
- Ivy Fifeb. 1905NZNew Zealand artist (1905–1976)
- William Paul Fifeb. 1917USAmerican scientist and military officer
- Wal Fifeb. 1929AUAustralian politician (1929-2017)
- John Fifeb. 1940USAmerican Christian leader
- Allan Fifeb. 1951CAbotanist in New Zealand (born 1951)
- Connie Fifeb. 1961CACanadian Cree poet and editor
- Stephen Fifeb. 1986USAmerican baseball player
- Dougie Fifeb. 1990GBScottish rugby union 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 26 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AL Albania | INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts) | — | 81 | #3,226 |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | — | 35 | #4,974 |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | 1972 | 2 | — |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | 1958 | 2 | — |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | 1952 | 2 | — |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | 1929 | 2 | — |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | 2013 | 1 | — |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | 2003 | 1 | — |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | 1995 | 1 | — |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | 1991 | 1 | — |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | 1988 | 1 | — |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | 1981 | 1 | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikipedia surname 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 Fife mean, and where does it come from?
- Person from the former kingdom of Fife, eastern Scotland. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Fife have the most bearers?
- Fife is most frequently recorded in Italy, where it is most often spelled fife.
What do you want to know about Fife?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/fifeThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Fife”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.