Gelfand
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ornamental name from Yiddish helfand ‘elephant’ (see Oliphant); the change from ^ to g is due to the influence of Russian, which has no h
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈɡɛɫfənd/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gelfand is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 236K(measured from records)
- RURussia≈1 in 321Kas Гельфанд
- BMBermuda≈1 in 35K
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 Gelfand 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 275 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 35K (inferred from the name graph)
1,410 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Bermuda, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Гельфанд in RU Russia, FI Finland.
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)
ornamental name from Yiddish helfand ‘elephant’ (see Oliphant); the change from ^ to g is due to the influence of Russian, which has no h.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gelfand 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 | — | 1,410 | 1 in 236K | 1.4K | Gelfand | 275 |
| RU Russia | — | ≈440 est. | ≈1 in 321K | — | Гельфанд | 97 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 172K | — | Gelfand | 67 |
| IL Israel | — | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 50K | — | Gelfand | 29 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 407K | — | Gelfand | 22 |
| NL Netherlands | — | ≈82 est. | ≈1 in 211K | — | Gelfand | 3 |
| FI Finland | — | ≈28 est. | ≈1 in 198K | — | Гельфанд | 1 |
| BM Bermuda | #198 | ≈2 est. | ≈1 in 35K | — | Gelfand | 1 |
1,410 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. 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)
- Alexander Parvusb. 1867BYnot in their usual nameGerman political activist (1867–1924)
- Israel Gelfandb. 1913USSoviet-American mathematician
- Vladimir Gelfandb. 1923UARussian writer (1923–1983)
- Boris Gelfandb. 1942RURussian scientist
- Sergey Gelfandb. 1944USRussian mathematician
- Vladimir I. Gelfandb. 1948USAmerican biologist
- James Gelfandb. 1959CACanadian musician
- Alan Gelfandb. 1963USAmerican skateboarder
- Michele J. Gelfandb. 1967USAmerican cultural psychologist (1967-)
- Boris Gelfandb. 1968BYBelarusian-Israeli chess player
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 11 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.4K | #18,992 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.4K | #19,234 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.4K | #18,656 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia surname tokens
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 Gelfand mean, and where does it come from?
- ornamental name from Yiddish helfand ‘elephant’ (see Oliphant); the change from ^ to g is due to the influence of Russian, which has no h. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Gelfand?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɡɛɫfənd/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Gelfand have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.4 thousand people named Gelfand, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gelfand.
- How common is the name Gelfand?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,410 people named Gelfand in 2010, about 1 in 236 thousand residents.
- How common is Gelfand compared with other names?
- In Bermuda, Gelfand is the 198th most common surname of 6,699 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gelfand?
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/gelfandThe 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, “Gelfand” — the 198th most common surname in Bermuda. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.