Pálffy
surname · Latin script
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 3 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/paːlfːi/(machine-generated) Hungarian · model-generated
Pálffy is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Hungary than in any other country.
- CHSwitzerland1 in 840K(measured from records)
- BEBelgium1 in 1.5M
- USUnited States1 in 3M
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Hungary (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 101 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 65K (inferred from the name graph)
≈150 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Hungary, 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 Palffy in US United States, SE Sweden, NZ New Zealand and 3 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
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Pálffy 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HU Hungary | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 65K | — | Palffy | 2 |
| SE Sweden | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 88K | — | Palffy | 4 |
| US United States | 110 | 1 in 3M | 110 | Palffy | 101 |
| KE Kenya | ≈92 est. | ≈1 in 584K | — | Palffy | 1 |
| DZ Algeria | ≈46 est. | ≈1 in 928K | — | Palffy | 1 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈16 est. | ≈1 in 317K | — | Palffy | 11 |
| CH Switzerland | 10 | 1 in 840K | 10 | — | 3 |
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; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Miklós Pálffyb. 1552HUHungarian soldier (1552–1600)
- Miklós Pálffyb. 1657HUHungarian politician (1657–1732)
- János Pálffyb. 1664HUAustrian field marshal (1664-1751)
- Ferdinánd Pálffyb. 1774HUAustrian theatre manager
- Albert Pálffyb. 1820HUHungarian writer (1820–1897)
- Fidél Pálffyb. 1895HUHungarian fascist politician, executed for war crimes (1895-1946)
- György Pálffyb. 1909HUHungarian military officer, politician (1909–1949)
- István Pálffyb. 1959HUHungarian architect, journalist and politician
- Pálffy Tiborb. 1967RORomanian-Hungarian actor
- Géza Pálffyb. 1971HUHungarian historian (born 1971)
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)6 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 10 | #60,931 |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- How do you pronounce Pálffy?
- It depends on the language: in Hungarian /paːlfːi/; in Slovak /pˈaːlffi/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- In which country does Pálffy have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 150 people named Pálffy in Hungary, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled palffy.
- How common is the name Pálffy?
- In the United States, the national register counted 110 people named Pálffy in 2010, about 1 in 3.0 million residents.
What do you want to know about Pálffy?
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/p%C3%A1lffyThe 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, “Pálffy”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.