Cafer

given name · Latin script

Meaning: a male given name from Arabic, equivalent to English Jafar

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

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

Cafer is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Türkiye than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • TRTürkiye≈1 in 1.8K(inferred from the name graph)
  • SYSyria≈1 in 7.8K
  • CYCyprus≈1 in 4.2K

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.

Türkiye (inferred from the name graph)

≈46,000 people, est.

Sources
84 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 1.8K (inferred from the name graph)

Türkiye, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

a male given name from Arabic, equivalent to English Jafar

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Cafer 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 Cafer is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
TR Türkiye#241≈46,000 est.≈1 in 1.8K#84Cafer84
SY Syria—≈2,500 est.≈1 in 7.8K—Cafer5
AF Afghanistan—≈1,600 est.≈1 in 23K—Cafer2
AZ Azerbaijan—≈600 est.≈1 in 17KlistedCafer6
AT Austria—≈360 est.≈1 in 24K18——
CY Cyprus#319≈300 est.≈1 in 4.2K—Cafer13
SE Sweden—1031 in 99K103Cafer14

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: the tr-tuik-child-stats register; the az-justice-names register; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024). 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(inferred from the name graph)

Cafer is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • German given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Germany, Türkiye, Austria, United States

    Languages: German, English, Dutch

    Also written Çafer

  • French given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Türkiye, Belgium, Syria

    Also written Cafèr

  • Bulgarian given name13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Bulgaria, Türkiye, Poland, Syria

    Languages: Bulgarian, Slovak, Polish

    Also written Чафер, Čafer, Cãfer

  • Russian given name9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, Türkiye, Kazakhstan

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Uzbek

    Also written Джафер, Dzhafer

33 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.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Cafer is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Turkish, 1. Küçük akarsu. 2. Caferî mezhebinin kurucusu. 3. Hz. Ali'nin Mute Savaşı´nda ölen kardeşinin adı.

    as a wordTDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)

  • In Romanian, CÁFER, caferi, s. m. Bivol negru din Africa.

    as a wordDEX online (dexonline.ro) - DEX '96 / DEX '98 definitions with etymology

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)

1850190019502000Cafer Tayyar Eğilmez, b. 1878Cafer Seydahmet Kırımer, b. 1889Cafer Çağatay, b. 1899Cafer Sadık Kutlay, b. 1912Cafer Zorlu, b. 1926Cafer Atalay, b. 1962Cafer Orbay, b. 1963Cafer Aydın, b. 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)

InformalMerhaba Cafer,Hi Cafer, (English)

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 22 sources across 13 countries.

Official registers attesting Cafer
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—103#8,362
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)201995—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)201895—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)201295—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)201195—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)202094—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)201594—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)201793—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)201693—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)201093—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)201392—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)201491—

Reference works 4

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • Тахиров, Речник на турските лични имена в България

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 Cafer mean, and where does it come from?
a male given name from Arabic, equivalent to English Jafar Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Cafer?
A machine transcription gives /d͡ʒafˈɛr/ (IPA) for Turkish.
Is Cafer a male or female name?
Cafer 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 Cafer?
In the etymology graph, Jafar, Xhafer and Cəfər are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Cafer have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 46 thousand people named Cafer in Türkiye, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cafer.
How common is the name Cafer?
In Sweden, the national register counted 103 people named Cafer, about 1 in 99 thousand residents.
How common is Cafer compared with other names?
In Türkiye, Cafer is the 241st most common given name of 264,080 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Cafer?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/cafer

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 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, “Cafer” — the 241st most common given name in Türkiye. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Cafer parses inside a full name →