Saffer
surname · Latin script
Meaning: probably from Old French saffre ‘glutton’; first attested Robert le Saffere, John Saffare 1275 SRWo
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Saffer is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 350K(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 156K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 236K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 216 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 156K (inferred from the name graph)
950 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
probably from Old French saffre ‘glutton’; first attested Robert le Saffere, John Saffare 1275 SRWo
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Where in the world(measured from records)
Saffer 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 950 | 1 in 350K | 950 | Saffer | 216 |
| DE Germany | ≈520 est. | ≈1 in 156K | — | Saffer | 62 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈280 est. | ≈1 in 236K | 193 | Saffer | 82 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 306K | — | Saffer | 10 |
| EG Egypt | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 582K | — | Saffer | 5 |
| AR Argentina | 155 | 1 in 293K | 155 | — | — |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈17 est. | ≈1 in 286K | — | Saffer | 5 |
950 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national). 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)
Saffer 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.
In English, from OF saffre glutton (of unknown etymology).
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, A native or inhabitant of South Africa.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In enm, alternative form of saphir
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Demian Safferb. 2000USAmerican geophysicist
- Boaz Y Safferb. 2000CAresearcher
- Lisa SafferAmerican opera singer and teacher
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 | 950 | #25,889 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 929 | #25,060 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 917 | #27,800 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 193 | #21,793 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 155 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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
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 Saffer mean, and where does it come from?
- probably from Old French saffre ‘glutton’; first attested Robert le Saffere, John Saffare 1275 SRWo Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Saffer have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 950 people named Saffer, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled saffer.
- How common is the name Saffer?
- In the United States, the national register counted 950 people named Saffer in 2010, about 1 in 350 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Saffer?
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/safferThe 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, “Saffer”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.