Khâlîfa

surname · Latin script

Khâlîfa is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Egypt than in any other country. In Bahrain it is the 9th most common surname. Recorded meaning: status name or honorific title from Arabic khalTfah ‘successor’, ‘regent’, ‘viceroy’, in English often transliterated as caliph.

  • BHBahrain≈1 in 790(inferred from the name graph)
  • EGEgypt≈1 in 1.6K
  • AEUnited Arab Emirates≈1 in 1.6K

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.

Egypt (inferred from the name graph)

≈74,000 people, est.

Record sources
236 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 794 (inferred from the name graph)

Bahrain, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts

(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Khalifa in EG Egypt, IN India, BH Bahrain and 4 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)

status name or honorific title from Arabic khalTfah ‘successor’, ‘regent’, ‘viceroy’, in English often transliterated as caliph. This was the title adopted after the death of Muhammad in 632 by his successor Abu-Bakr. The caliphs ruled in Bahgdad until 1258, then in Egypt until the Ottoman conquest (1517). The title was then held by the Ottoman sultans in Istanbul until it was abolished by Kamal Atattirk in 1924.

Cited for this meaning 5

  • A concise dictionary of first names
  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Whats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names
  • A Dictionary of Muslim Names
  • Dicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…

Where the surname Khâlîfa is found

(measured from records)

Khâlîfa 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 Khâlîfa is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
EG Egypt#153≈74,000 est.≈1 in 1.6K—Khalifa151
IN India—8,8861 in 149K8.9KKhalifa81
SA Saudi Arabia#452≈8,600 est.≈1 in 4.1K—Khalifa95
TZ Tanzania—≈7,900 est.≈1 in 8.7K4Khalifa25
TN Tunisia#62≈7,600 est.≈1 in 1.6K—Khalifa68
AE United Arab Emirates#87≈7,000 est.≈1 in 1.6K—Khalifa153
BH Bahrain#9≈2,000 est.≈1 in 794—Khalifa93

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; INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results. 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).

Evidence

(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Khâlîfa under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Khâlîfa mean, and where does it come from?
status name or honorific title from Arabic khalTfah ‘successor’, ‘regent’, ‘viceroy’, in English often transliterated as caliph. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names and Dictionary of American Family Names and 3 other sources.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Khâlîfa?
Mondonomo estimates about 74 thousand people named Khâlîfa in Egypt, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled khalifa. After it come India, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania and Tunisia; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Khâlîfa?
In India, the national register counted 8,886 people named Khâlîfa, about 1 in 149 thousand residents.
How common is Khâlîfa compared with other names?
In Egypt, Khâlîfa is the 153rd most common surname of 306,210 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Khâlîfa?

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

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kh%C3%A2l%C3%AEfa

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, “Khâlîfa” — the 153rd most common surname in Egypt. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Khâlîfa parses inside a full name →