Cliff
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Person who lives by a slope, riverbank or cliff, or person from Cliffe
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/klɪf/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Cliff is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- CACanada≈1 in 7.7K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 13K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 14K
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)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 482 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 7.7K (inferred from the name graph)
11,435 people, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Canada, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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 who lives by a slope, riverbank or cliff, or person from Cliffe.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cliff 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 11,435 | 1 in 29K | 11K | Cliff | 482 |
| KE Kenya | — | ≈6,500 est. | ≈1 in 8.3K | — | Cliff | 21 |
| CA Canada | #775 | ≈4,900 est. | ≈1 in 7.7K | 1 | Cliff | 184 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈4,700 est. | ≈1 in 14K | listed | Cliff | 203 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Cliff | 53 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 13K | 1 | Cliff | 151 |
| NZ New Zealand | #633 | ≈510 est. | ≈1 in 9.7K | — | Cliff | 65 |
| IS Iceland | — | ≈42 est. | ≈1 in 8.3K | 1 | Cliff | 5 |
11,435 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; the hanks-first-names-2001 register; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)
Cliff 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 OE clif 'cliff, rock, steep descent'; first attested Gislebertus de Cliua 1084 GeldR (W)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
Short form of pClifford, now also sometimes of Clifton. It is commonly used as a given name, especially since the
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, A vertical (or nearly vertical) rock face.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, from the cliff; feminine
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In German, männl. Vom., Kurzform des englischen
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
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)
- Cliff Arquetteb. 1905USAmerican actor (1905–1974)
- Cliff Bastinb. 1912GBEnglish footballer (1912-1991)
- Cliff Jonesb. 1935GBWelsh footballer (born 1935)
- Cliff Gormanb. 1936USAmerican actor (1936-2002)
- Cliff Osmondb. 1937USAmerican actor and writer (1937-2012)
- Cliff Pottsb. 1942USAmerican actor
- Cliff DeYoungb. 1945USAmerican actor (b. 1945)
- Cliff Williamsb. 1949GBEnglish musician
- Cliff Martinezb. 1954USAmerican musician and composer, composer, drummer
- Cliff Eidelmanb. 1964USAmerican composer
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 58 sources across 34 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 11K | #2,267 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 43 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 38 | #2,267 |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2023 | 12 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 6 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 1 | #2,319 |
| IS Iceland | Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry) | 2023 | 1 | — |
| AU Australia | SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present) | 1998 | 1 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | A Concise Dictionary of First Names (Hanks & Hodges, 2001) | — | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | The Penguin Book of Baby Names (David Pickering) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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 Cliff mean, and where does it come from?
- Person who lives by a slope, riverbank or cliff, or person from Cliffe. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Is Cliff a male or female name?
- Cliff 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 Cliff have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 11 thousand people named Cliff, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cliff.
- What are other forms of the name Cliff?
- In the etymology graph, Clifford is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Cliff?
- A machine transcription gives /klɪf/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Cliff?
- In the United States, the national register counted 11,435 people named Cliff in 2020, about 1 in 29 thousand residents.
- How common is Cliff compared with other names?
- In New Zealand, Cliff is the 633rd most common given name of 26,737 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Cliff?
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/cliffThe 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, “Cliff” — the 633rd most common given name in New Zealand. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.