Ulf

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in Swedish: a male given name, revived in the twentieth century

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

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

Ulf is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Sweden than in any other country. In Benin it is the 27th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • SESweden1 in 170(measured from records)
  • DEGermany≈1 in 2.6K
  • BJBenin≈1 in 706

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.

Sweden (measured from records)

60,013 people

Sources
194 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 170 (inferred from the name graph)

Sweden

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

a male given name, revived in the twentieth century

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

How Ulf is read(measured from records)

Ulf is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.

  • German52%

    männl. Vom., Kurzform von Namen, die mit dem Namenbestandteil altsächs. wulf »Wolf« gebildet sind, oder Entlehnung des nordischen Vornamens U lf (altnord. Ulfr) mit gleicher Bedeutung.

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

    s. OD III und WOLF

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

  • Swedish26%

    a male given name, revived in the twentieth century

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • English6.0%

    Initialism of Ultra Low Frequency, the band of radio waves between 300 hertz and 3000 hertz.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Ulf 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 Ulf is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
SE Sweden#32760,0131 in 17060KUlf80
DE Germany#407≈31,000 est.≈1 in 2.6K1Ulf194
BJ Benin#27≈18,000 est.≈1 in 706—Ulf6
CN China—≈2,600 est.≈1 in 528K—Ulf5
NO Norway—2,0301 in 2.7K5.7KUlf39
FI Finland—1,2731 in 4.4K2.2KUlf13

60,013 people counted by Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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: Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); the de-leipzig-vornamen register; SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)

Ulf is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Swedish given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Sweden, United States, Norway, Denmark

    Languages: Swedish, Norwegian, Danish

    Also written Úlf

  • Russian given name8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Sweden, Türkiye, Ukraine

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Ульф, Улф

48 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)

Ulf 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.

  • Nordic: ‘wolf’.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • Danish and Swedish: cognate of WOLF , from the Old Norse personal name or byname Úlfr . Cognate: Norwegian: Ulv .

    as a word

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)

190019502000Ulf von Euler, b. 1905Ulf Schmidt, b. 1934Ulf Merbold, b. 1941Ulf Andersson, b. 1951Ulf Timmermann, b. 1962Ulf Kristersson, b. 1963Ulf Kirsten, b. 1965Marcus Grönholm, b. 1968Sebastian Larsson, b. 1985PewDiePie, b. 1989

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)

InformalHallo Ulf,Hi Ulf, (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 42 sources across 22 countries.

Official registers attesting Ulf
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—60K#61
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)199939K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)200039K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)200138K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)200238K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)200337K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)202032K—
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—5.7K#600
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20132.4K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20142.4K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20152.4K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20162.3K—

Reference works 3

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • 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 Ulf mean, and where does it come from?
a male given name, revived in the twentieth century Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Ulf have the most bearers?
In Sweden, the national register counted about 60 thousand people named Ulf, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ulf.
Where is Ulf most common?
Ulf is densest in Sweden, where the national register counts about 1 in 170 people carrying it.
How do you pronounce Ulf?
A machine transcription gives /ʊlf/ (IPA) for German.
Is Ulf a male or female name?
Ulf 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 Ulf?
In the etymology graph, Uffe, Velvel and Úlfur are forms of the same name in other languages.
How common is the name Ulf?
In Sweden, the national register counted 60,013 people named Ulf, about 1 in 170 residents.
How common is Ulf compared with other names?
In Sweden, Ulf is the 327th most common given name of 45,482 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Ulf?

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

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, “Ulf” — the 327th most common given name in Sweden. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Ulf parses inside a full name →