Clifford
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Person from Clifford, a place-name meaning ford by a bank
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Clifford is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- SGSingapore≈1 in 2.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 2.5K
- CACanada≈1 in 2.8K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 511 (measured from records)
- 1 in 2.2K (inferred from the name graph)
78,907 people, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
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)
Person from Clifford, a place-name meaning ford by a bank.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Clifford 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 | #411 | 78,907 | 1 in 4.2K | 79K | Clifford | 511 |
| GB United Kingdom | #358 | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | 4 | Clifford | 254 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.3K | — | Clifford | 73 |
| ZA South Africa | #453 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | — | Clifford | 89 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.3K | — | Clifford | 107 |
| CA Canada | #406 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | 5 | Clifford | 201 |
| SG Singapore | #266 | ≈2,500 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Clifford | 60 |
| GY Guyana | — | 338 | 1 in 2.2K | 338 | — | 8 |
78,907 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Clifford 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, from Clifford (Devon, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, West Riding of Yorkshire) or ‘dweller at the ford by the steep bank’; first attested Fulk, Roger de Clifford 1182 P (Wa, Lei)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
Transferred use of the surname, recorded as a given name from the 17th century. There are several places (e.g. in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and Yorkshire) so named, from Old English clif ‘cliff’, ‘slope’, ‘riverbank’ + ford ‘ford’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, places, for example in Devon, Gloucs., Herefords., and W Yorks., so called from OE clif slope (see Clive) + ford Ford. Var.: Clif forth. A family of this name trace their descent from Walter de Clifford, eldest son of Richard FitzPons, living in the reign of Henry II Vars.: Clitherow, Cleatherow, Cluderay.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, A habitational surname from Old English.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Irish, This English toponymic is, in Ireland, mainly the anglicized form of Ó Clumháin. See under Cluvane and Colman. For Co. Fermanagh see Crifferty and Clifferty
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
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)
- Clifford Campbellb. 1892JMJamaican politician (1892-1991)
- Clifford Odetsb. 1906USAmerican playwright, screenwriter, and actor (1906–1963)
- Clifford Shullb. 1915USAmerican physicist (1915–2001)
- Cliff Robertsonb. 1923USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor (1923–2011)
- Clifford Husbandsb. 1926BBBarbadian judge (1926-2017)
- Clifford Geertzb. 1926USAmerican anthropologist
- Kip Nivenb. 1945USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor and theatre director (1945-2019)
- Cliff Burtonb. 1962USnot in their usual nameAmerican bassist (1962–1986)
- Cliff Curtisb. 1968NZnot in their usual nameNew Zealand actor
- Method Manb. 1971USnot in their usual nameAmerican rapper and actor (born 1971)
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 79 sources across 44 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 22K | #1,618 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 22K | #1,486 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 21K | #1,659 |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname 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 Clifford mean, and where does it come from?
- Person from Clifford, a place-name meaning ford by a bank. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Is Clifford a male or female name?
- Clifford 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 Clifford have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 79 thousand people named Clifford, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled clifford.
- Where is Clifford most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Clifford is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 2.2 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- What are other forms of the name Clifford?
- In the etymology graph, Cliff is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Clifford?
- In the United States, the national register counted 78,907 people named Clifford in 2020, about 1 in 4.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Clifford compared with other names?
- In the United States, Clifford is the 411th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Clifford?
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/cliffordThe 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, “Clifford” — the 411th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.