Sharifa
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Swahili: Muslim feminine form of Sharifu: 'noble'
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ʃəɹiːfə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Sharifa is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Tanzania than in any other country. In Oman it is the 51st most common given name.
- TZTanzania≈1 in 911(inferred from the name graph)
- UZUzbekistan≈1 in 6.5K
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 25K
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.
- Tanzania (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 216 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 911 (inferred from the name graph)
≈64,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Tanzania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Шарифа in UZ Uzbekistan.
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)
Muslim feminine form of Sharifu: 'noble'
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Sharifa is read(measured from records)
Sharifa is one spelling over 5 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English24%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Sharifa in English.
- Hindi22%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Sharifa in Hindi.
- Swahili14%
Muslim feminine form of Sharifu: 'noble'
as a nameAfrican Names
- Bangla10%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Sharifa in Bangla.
- Arabic8.2%
noble, eminent, honourable, highborn
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
noble, honourable, highborn; fem. of
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
noble, honored; feminine of Sharif.
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
noblewoman; honorable lady
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
noble, honourable
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Sharifa 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TZ Tanzania | #250 | ≈64,000 est. | ≈1 in 911 | 1 | Sharifa | 19 |
| AF Afghanistan | #188 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Sharifa | 9 |
| BD Bangladesh | #630 | ≈6,500 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Sharifa | 34 |
| UZ Uzbekistan | #912 | ≈4,700 est. | ≈1 in 6.5K | — | Шарифа | 11 |
| OM Oman | #51 | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | — | Sharifa | 41 |
| US United States | — | 1,193 | 1 in 279K | 1.2K | Sharifa | 216 |
| QA Qatar | #277 | ≈400 est. | ≈1 in 6.2K | — | Sharifa | 31 |
| BH Bahrain | #100 | ≈300 est. | ≈1 in 5.1K | — | Sharifa | 20 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results. 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Sharifa Jumab. 1970TZbadminton player
- Basirah Sharifa Nasirb. 1999BHBahraini female sprinter
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 46 sources across 32 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.2K | #10,950 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2024 | 8 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 3 | #10,950 |
Reference works 2
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)
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 Sharifa mean, and where does it come from?
- Muslim feminine form of Sharifu: 'noble' Recorded by African Names.
- How do you pronounce Sharifa?
- A machine transcription gives /ʃəɹiːfə/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Sharifa a male or female name?
- Sharifa is a female 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 Sharifa?
- In the etymology graph, Şerife and Sharifah are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Sharifa have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 64 thousand people named Sharifa in Tanzania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sharifa.
- How common is the name Sharifa?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,193 people named Sharifa in 2020, about 1 in 279 thousand residents.
- How common is Sharifa compared with other names?
- In Tanzania, Sharifa is the 250th most common given name of 37,285 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sharifa?
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/sharifaThe 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, “Sharifa” — the 250th most common given name in Tanzania. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.