Nafe
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Probably an Americanized form of German Neff or Nave (see Neve)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Nafe is a given name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
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)
Probably an Americanized form of German Neff or Nave (see Neve).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Nafe counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 330 | — |
| ES Spain | — | 23 | — |
| CH Switzerland | — | 6 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 5 | — |
| EC Ecuador | — | 4 | — |
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; INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024). 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Nafe 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.
unexplained.
as a nameDictionary of American Family 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)
- Alicia Naféb. 1947ARArgentinian operatic mezzo-soprano singer
- Gertrude NafeUSAmerican teacher, essayist
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 18 sources across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 330 | #60,960 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 321 | #66,499 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 253 | #71,808 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 23 | #75,827 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 23 | #75,692 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 5 | #230,412 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2012 | 4 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2013 | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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 Nafe mean, and where does it come from?
- Probably an Americanized form of German Neff or Nave (see Neve). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- Is Nafe a male or female name?
- Nafe 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.
- In which country does Nafe have the most bearers?
- Nafe is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Nafe?
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/nafeThe 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, “Nafe”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.