Lafe

given name · Latin script

Meaning: A diminutive of the male given name Lafayette

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

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

Lafe is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 842K(measured from records)
  • ZMZambia≈1 in 53K
  • CHSwitzerland≈1 in 425K

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.

United States (measured from records)

395 people, 2020

Sources
110 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 53K (inferred from the name graph)

Zambia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

A diminutive of the male given name Lafayette.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Lafe 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 Lafe is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States3951 in 842K385Lafe110
ZM Zambia≈330 est.≈1 in 53K—Lafe5
NG Nigeria≈66 est.≈1 in 3.2M—Lafe16
GB United Kingdom≈34 est.≈1 in 1.9M—Lafe24
BR Brazil≈32 est.≈1 in 6.6M24——
CH Switzerland≈20 est.≈1 in 425K—Lafe1
IL Israel≈7 est.≈1 in 1.2M—Lafe3
NZ New Zealand≈6 est.≈1 in 870K—Lafe2

395 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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)

Lafe is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Láfé, Lafé, Läfë, Lafè

  • French given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States

    Also written Lafé, Làfé

39 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.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Lafe is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In enm, alternative form of love (“remainder”)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In ang, inflection of lāf:

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In kwh, what?

    as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0

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)

  • Lafe Wardb. 1925USAmerican lawyer (1925-2013)

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)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 9 sources across 6 countries.

Official registers attesting Lafe
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020385#24,393
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)191617—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)188417—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)196115—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)191815—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)198314—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)197914—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)196414—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)198412—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)192412—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)200611—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)197511—

Reference works 1

  • 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 Lafe mean, and where does it come from?
A diminutive of the male given name Lafayette. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Lafe?
A machine transcription gives /ləf/ (IPA) for English.
Is Lafe a male or female name?
Lafe 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 Lafe have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 395 people named Lafe, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lafe.
How common is the name Lafe?
In the United States, the national register counted 395 people named Lafe in 2020, about 1 in 842 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Lafe?

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/lafe

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, “Lafe”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Lafe parses inside a full name →