Rafael
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: Raphael
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/rafael/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Rafael is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country, where it is the 27th most common given name.
- DODominican Republic≈1 in 101(inferred from the name graph)
- VEVenezuela≈1 in 149
- ESSpain1 in 230
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.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- #200 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 519 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 101 (inferred from the name graph)
873,321 people, 2022
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Dominican Republic, 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)
Biblical; Spanish form of Raphael, name of one of the archangels. Feminine form: Rafaela.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
How Rafael is read(measured from records)
Rafael is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Spanish62%
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Portuguese18%
Raphael (an archangel)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English10%
A male given name, variant of Raphael.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Rafael 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | #27 | 873,321 | 1 in 242 | 873K | Rafael | 295 |
| ES Spain | #30 | 217,304 | 1 in 230 | 225K | Rafael | 273 |
| VE Venezuela | #9 | ≈190,000 est. | ≈1 in 149 | — | Rafael | 152 |
| US United States | #492 | 148,942 | 1 in 2.2K | 149K | Rafael | 519 |
| CO Colombia | #79 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 458 | — | Rafael | 198 |
| DO Dominican Republic | #4 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 101 | 47K | Rafael | 113 |
| SV El Salvador | #50 | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 255 | — | Rafael | 104 |
873,321 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022. 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: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); JCE — Nombres más registrados (annual). 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)
Rafael 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.
Biblical; Spanish form of Raphael, name of one of the archangels. Feminine form: Rafaela.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
Deus cura; God cures
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In Swedish, Rafael är ett bibliskt namn av hebreiskt ursprung med betydelsen ’Gud har helat’. Rafael är en av de tre namngivna ärkeänglarna i Bibeln och spelar en stor roll i Tobits bok i Apokryferna. En känd nutida namnbärare är den spanske tennisspelaren Rafael Nadal (f. 1986). I den rikssvenska almanackan 24 mars och i den finlandssvenska 22 december.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
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)
- Carlos I of Portugalb. 1863PTnot in their usual nameKing of Portugal from 1889 to 1908 (1863–1908)
- Manuel II of Portugalb. 1889PTnot in their usual nameKing of Portugal (1889–1932)
- Rafael Leónidas Trujillob. 1891DOPresident of the Dominican Republic (1891-1961)
- Rafael Benítezb. 1960ESSpanish association football manager and former player
- Rafael Correab. 1963ECPresident of Ecuador (2007 - 2017) y Prófugo de la Justicia
- Ted Cruzb. 1970CAnot in their usual nameAmerican politician (born 1970)
- Joaquin Phoenixb. 1974USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
- Rafael Márquezb. 1979MXMexican association football player
- Rafael van der Vaartb. 1983NLDutch association football player (born 1983)
- Rafael Nadalb. 1986ESSpanish tennis player (born 1986)
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 140 sources across 67 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 873K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 868K | #15 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 822K | #38 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes no Brasil API (Census 2010 + 2022) | — | 815K | #13 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 225K | #18 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 217K | #33 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 149K | #373 |
| DO Dominican Republic | JCE — Nombres más registrados (annual) | 2025 | 47K | #1 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 39K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 5.6K | #15 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 1.6K | — |
| DO Dominican Republic | Dominican Republic — Nombres más comunes registrados 2022-2023 | 2023 | 1.5K | #9 |
Reference works 9
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 are other forms of the name Rafael?
- In the etymology graph, Raphael, Raphaël and Raffaele are forms of the same name in other languages; Rafa and Rafinha are recorded short or pet forms.
- In which country does Rafael have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 873 thousand people named Rafael, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rafael.
- Where does the name Rafael come from?
- Biblical; Spanish form of Raphael, name of one of the archangels. Feminine form: Rafaela. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- How do you pronounce Rafael?
- A machine transcription gives /rafael/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- Is Rafael a male or female name?
- Rafael 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.
- What does the name Rafael mean?
- In Spanish, Raphael
- How common is the name Rafael?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 873,321 people named Rafael in 2022, about 1 in 242 residents.
- How common is Rafael compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Rafael is the 27th most common given name of 474,894 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Rafael?
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/rafaelThe 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, “Rafael” — the 27th most common given name in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.