Hafiz
given name · Latin script
Meaning: ‘Custodian’, ‘guardian’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/hɑːfɪz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Hafiz is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Pakistan than in any other country, where it is the 49th most common given name.
- PKPakistan≈1 in 738(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 1.9K
- AEUnited Arab Emirates≈1 in 3.2K
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.
- Pakistan (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 237 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 738 (inferred from the name graph)
≈320,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Pakistan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Hafeez in US United States and Хафиз in AZ Azerbaijan.
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)
‘Custodian’, ‘guardian’. Al-Hafiz was an honorific term denoting someone — 293 who knew the Qur‘an by heart. Feminine form: Hafza.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Hafiz 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PK Pakistan | #49 | ≈320,000 est. | ≈1 in 738 | 5 | Hafiz | 137 |
| BD Bangladesh | #368 | ≈49,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | listed | Hafiz | 82 |
| MY Malaysia | #220 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Hafiz | 80 |
| AF Afghanistan | #329 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | 2 | Hafiz | 20 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Hafiz | 51 |
| AZ Azerbaijan | — | ≈5,100 est. | ≈1 in 2K | 108 | Хафиз | 13 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | #327 | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 3.2K | — | Hafiz | 71 |
| US United States | — | 695 | 1 in 479K | 1.3K | Hafeez | 237 |
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: Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) — Form-33 List of Contesting Candidates, 2018 General Election; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; Azerbaijan Ministry of Justice — Civil Registry Name Statistics. 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)
Hafiz is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A Muslim who has memorized the whole Qur'an.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Arabic, guardian, protector
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
In Arabic, guard; protector
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
Protector
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
guardian
as a nameWhats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names
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)
- Hafız Ahmed Paşab. 1564BGnot in their usual nameOttoman grand vizier (1564–1632)
- Hafiz Ibrahimb. 1872EGEgyptian poet
- Hafız Mehmetb. 1874TRnot in their usual nameTurkish statesperson (1874–1926)
- Hafiz Hakki Pashab. 1879MKGeneral of the Ottoman Empire military (1879–1915)
- Hafez Assadb. 1930SYnot in their usual namePresident of Syria from 1971 to 2000
- Hafiz Uddin Ahmadb. 1939BDBangladeshi politician, former military officer, speaker and football player
- Hafiz Pashayevb. 1941AZAzerbaijani diplomat
- Hafiz Saeedb. 1950PKPakistani convicted terrorist
- Hafız Süleymanoğlub. 1967TRnot in their usual nameTurkish weightlifter (born 1967)
- Muhammad Hafiz Hashimb. 1982MYMalaysian badminton player
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 64 sources across 35 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 684 | #16,298 |
| AZ Azerbaijan | Azerbaijan Ministry of Justice — Civil Registry Name Statistics | — | 108 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 11 | #16,298 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 8 | — |
Reference works 7
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- 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
- Where does the name Hafiz come from?
- ‘Custodian’, ‘guardian’. Al-Hafiz was an honorific term denoting someone — 293 who knew the Qur‘an by heart. Feminine form: Hafza. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- How do you pronounce Hafiz?
- A machine transcription gives /hɑːfɪz/ (IPA) for Urdu.
- What does the name Hafiz mean?
- Recorded meaning: ‘Custodian’, ‘guardian’.
- Is Hafiz a male or female name?
- Hafiz 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 Hafiz?
- In the etymology graph, Hafız is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Hafiz have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 316 thousand people named Hafiz in Pakistan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled hafiz.
- How common is the name Hafiz?
- In the United States, the national register counted 695 people named Hafiz in 2020, about 1 in 479 thousand residents.
- How common is Hafiz compared with other names?
- In Pakistan, Hafiz is the 49th most common given name of 77,659 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Hafiz?
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/hafizThe 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, “Hafiz” — the 49th most common given name in Pakistan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.