Ephraim

given name · Latin script

Meaning: A biblical name meaning 'fruitful', historically enduring in Jewish and Christian communities

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

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

Ephraim is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • ZASouth Africa≈1 in 2.8K(inferred from the name graph)
  • NGNigeria≈1 in 4.9K
  • USUnited States1 in 56K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Ephraim itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)

≈44,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
323 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 2.8K (inferred from the name graph)

South Africa, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

EphraimLatin(measured from records)
ΕφραίμGreek(measured from records)

Locally spelled Efraim in SE Sweden, CY Cyprus.

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)

A biblical name meaning 'fruitful', historically enduring in Jewish and Christian communities.

Sources 1

  • Biblical Names Compiled Database

Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Ephraim 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 Ephraim is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
NG Nigeria—≈44,000 est.≈1 in 4.9K—Ephraim83
ZA South Africa#508≈20,000 est.≈1 in 2.8K—Ephraim55
TZ Tanzania—≈9,900 est.≈1 in 5.9K1Ephraim21
US United States—5,9111 in 56K5.9KEphraim323
ID Indonesia—≈5,800 est.≈1 in 46K—Ephraim32
GH Ghana#441≈1,700 est.≈1 in 17K—Ephraim34
SE Sweden—630as Efraim1 in 16K630Efraim6
CY Cyprus—103as Εφραιμ1 in 12K103Efraim5

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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results; CYSTAT — Name frequency (2011 Population Census). 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)

Ephraim is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Swahili given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania

    Languages: Swahili, Southern Sotho, Kinyarwanda

    Also written Ephraïm

  • Spanish given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Philippines, United States, Brazil, South Africa

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Ephraïm, Ephraím

  • Hebrew given name17 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Israel, Romania, Türkiye, Lebanon

    Languages: Hebrew, Turkish

    Also written אפרים, Efrayim, Efraimi, Effraim, Ephrayim

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Ephrai͏̈m, Éphraïm, Ephraïm, Ephraím

  • Arabic given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Egypt, Libya, United States, Yemen

    Also written Ephraïm

  • Polish given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States, United Kingdom

    Also written Ephraïm

  • French (Côte d’Ivoire) given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Côte d’Ivoire

    Also written Ephraïm, Éphraïm

56 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)

Ephraim 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.

  • Double fruitfulness or 'I shall be fruitful' (derived from the Hebrew root 'pārā').

    as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database

  • He represents the concept of divine election over primogeniture and the fruitfulness of God's blessing in the land of affliction.

    as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database

  • In German, Hebrew Ḥanokh ‘the fruitful one’; also Jewish surname forms

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

  • In English, Fruitful one; one of Joseph's sons in the Bible

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • In English, The younger son of Joseph in the Bible, eponymous ancestor of one of the twelve tribes of Israel.

    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)

0500100015002000Ephraim of Antioch, b. 401Ephraim Chambers, b. 1680Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, b. 1729Ephraim George Squier, b. 1821Ephraim Moses Lilien, b. 1874Ephraim Katzir, b. 1916Red Rocha, b. 1923Ephraim Kishon, b. 1924Ephraim Sneh, b. 1944Ephraim Sykes, b. 1985

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)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 73 sources across 37 countries.

Official registers attesting Ephraim
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.2K#22,378
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.1K#23,691
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000945#24,744

Reference works 7

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • 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)
  • Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)

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 Ephraim mean, and where does it come from?
A biblical name meaning 'fruitful', historically enduring in Jewish and Christian communities. Recorded by Biblical Names Compiled Database.
How do you pronounce Ephraim?
A machine transcription gives /ifɹəm/ (IPA) for English.
Is Ephraim a male or female name?
Ephraim 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 Ephraim?
In the etymology graph, Efraim, Efraín and Ephrem are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Ephraim have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 44 thousand people named Ephraim in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ephraim.
How common is the name Ephraim?
In the United States, the national register counted 5,911 people named Ephraim in 2020, about 1 in 56 thousand residents.
How common is Ephraim compared with other names?
In Ghana, Ephraim is the 441st most common given name of 14,081 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Ephraim?

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

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, “Ephraim” — the 441st most common given name in Ghana. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Ephraim parses inside a full name →