Pálfi

Name: Pálfi: recorded bearers, distribution and rank
Creator: Mondonomo
Published: 2026-10-13
License: https://mondonomo.ai/tos#rights

surname · Latin script

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 3 countries

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

Pálfi is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Romania than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Típusa: Apanévi eredetű, magyar családnév. Eredete: Végső forrása a ’kicsi, kis, csekély, kevés’ jelentésű parvus szó.

rarermore common

USUnited States1 in 1.9M(measured from records)
HRCroatia1 in 18K
HUHungary≈1 in 18K

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.

: Romania (inferred from the name graph)
Record sources: 104 (measured from records)
: 1 in 18K (inferred from the name graph)

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Palfi

Locally spelled Palfi in US United States, DE Germany, AT Austria 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

Típusa: Apanévi eredetű, magyar családnév. Eredete: Végső forrása a ’kicsi, kis, csekély, kevés’ jelentésű parvus szó. Ez már a latin nyelvben Paulus alakban lett ragadványnév (cognomen), majd nemzetségnév, s gyakori egyénnév. Az egész keresztény világban kedvelt keresztnévvé vált. A magyar nyelvben elmaradt a latin -us végződése, s az -au- kettőshangzó (diftongus) -á-ra egyszerűsödött (monoftongizálódott). Így alakult ki a Pál névalak. Mind az Árpádok, mind az Anjouk korában kedvelt keresztnév volt. A ’fia’ jelentésű -fi utótaggal kiegészülve sok családnév lett belőle, amelyhez néha hozzákapcsolódhatott az -a birtokjel is (Pálfia). Elterjedtsége: A Pálfi alak az egész nyelvterületen elterjedt, de Erdélyben, különösen Udvarhelyszékben nagyon gyakori, a Pálffy a Dunántúl északi felében fordul elő többször.

Cited for this meaning 1

Családnevek enciklopédiája

Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

Pálfi 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 Pálfi is recorded, by country
Country				Most common spelling	Sources
RO Romania	≈610 est.	≈1 in 35K	—	Palfi	13
HU Hungary	≈540 est.	≈1 in 18K	—	Palfi	2
HR Croatia	236	1 in 18K	236	—	—
DE Germany	≈220 est.	≈1 in 372K	—	Palfi	45
US United States	176	1 in 1.9M	189	Palfi	104
AT Austria	≈66 est.	≈1 in 134K	—	Palfi	12
UY Uruguay	≈20 est.	≈1 in 165K	—	Palfi	2

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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form). 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

Pálfi is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

Romanian surname2 spellings in the group
Most recorded in Romania
Also written Palfi
a separate name2 spellings in the group
Also written Palfi
Slovak surname3 spellings in the group
Most recorded in Slovakia, Czechia
Languages: Slovak, Czech
Also written Palfi
Croatian surname9 spellings in the group
Most recorded in Croatia, Serbia
Languages: Croatian, Serbian
Also written Palfi, Палфи
Danish surname7 spellings in the group
Most recorded in Denmark, Sweden, Norway
Languages: Danish, Swedish, Norwegian
Also written Palfi
Italian surname2 spellings in the group
Most recorded in Italy, United States, United Kingdom, Canada
Also written Palfi

11 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.

Notable people with this name

Johann Palfy von Kanizsayb. 1584HUnot in their usual nameHungarian priest
Bela Palfib. 1923RSSerbian footballer (1923-1995)
Dénes Pálfib. 1938HUHungarian politician
Géza Pálfib. 1941ROHungarian Catholic priest from Romania (1941–1984)
Balázs Pálfib. 1957HU(1957–) radio host, journalist
István Pálfib. 1966HUHungarian politician (1966-2006)
József Pálfib. 1967RORomanian historian
György Pálfib. 1974HUHungarian film director
Kata Pálfib. 1975HUHungarian actress, fairy thale therapist
Loránd-Levente Pálfib. 1981ROlexicographer, translator and writer (1981–)

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

FormalTisztelt Pálfi!Dear Pálfi, (English)

InformalTisztelt Pálfi!Hello, (English)

Evidence

6 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 3 countries.

Reference works 2

Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Frequently asked questions

How do you pronounce Pálfi?: A machine transcription gives /paːlfi/ (IPA) for Hungarian.
What does the name Pálfi mean?: Recorded meaning: Típusa: Apanévi eredetű, magyar családnév. Eredete: Végső forrása a ’kicsi, kis, csekély, kevés’ jelentésű parvus szó.
In which country does Pálfi have the most bearers?: Mondonomo estimates about 613 people named Pálfi in Romania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled palfi.
Where is Pálfi most common?: Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Pálfi is densest in Croatia — about 1 in 18 thousand people — even though Romania holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Pálfi?: In Croatia, the national register counted 236 people named Pálfi in 2021, about 1 in 18 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Pálfi?

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%A1lfi

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 2026-10-13 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, “Pálfi”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Pálfi parses inside a full name →