Ranulf
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Ranulf is a given name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom. Recorded meaning: Scottish and northern English: from an Old Norse personal name, Reginulfr, derived from regin ‘advice’, ‘decision’ + ulfr ‘wolf’.
- GBUnited Kingdom
- PHPhilippines
- DEGermany
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Scottish and northern English: from an Old Norse personal name, Reginulfr, derived from regin ‘advice’, ‘decision’ + ulfr ‘wolf’. This was introduced into Scotland and northern England by Scandinavian settlers in the early Mid- dle Ages. Raquel @° Spanish form of )Rachel, brought to public attention by the fame and good looks of the film actress Raquel Welch (b. 1940 as Raquel Tejada, in Chicago). Her father was Bolivian, her mother of English stock. Variant: Raquelle.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Ranulf is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Scottish: from an Old Norse personal name, Reginulfr , composed of the elements regin advice, decision (also, the gods) + úlfr wolf. The name was introduced into Scotland by Scandinavian settlers in the early Middle Ages.
as a word
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)
- Ranulf I of Aquitaineb. 820FRFrankish noble
- Ranulf IIb. 850Frankish noble
- Ranulf Flambardb. 1060GBBishop of Durham and royal official (c. 1060 – 1128)
- Ranulf le Meschin, 3rd Earl of Chesterb. 1074Norman magnate
- Ranulf II, Count of Alifeb. 1093ITCount of Alife
- Ranulf de Gernon, 4th Earl of Chesterb. 1099GBEnglish noble
- Ranulf de Glanvillb. 1120GBChief Justiciar of England and legal author
- Ranulf de Blondeville, 6th Earl of Chesterb. 1170GBAnglo-Norman baron born in Wales
- Ranulf Higdenb. 1280English chronicler and Benedictine monk (c. 1280–1364)
- Ranulf Comptonb. 1878USAmerican politician (1878–1974)
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 4 sources across 1 country.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 2
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Ranulf mean, and where does it come from?
- Scottish and northern English: from an Old Norse personal name, Reginulfr, derived from regin ‘advice’, ‘decision’ + ulfr ‘wolf’. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- Is Ranulf a male or female name?
- Ranulf 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 are other forms of the name Ranulf?
- In the etymology graph, Randy, Randel and Randolf are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Ranulf have the most bearers?
- Ranulf is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom.
What do you want to know about Ranulf?
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/ranulfThe 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, “Ranulf”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.