Giffen
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Giffen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Main GB Location (1881): W Scotland; also London,. from Mag Dhuibhfinn, see McGaffin . 2 English, Scottish: see Geffen .
- USUnited States1 in 337K(measured from records)
- BEBelgium1 in 12M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 3 (measured from records)
- 1 in 337K (inferred from the name graph)
988 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
Main GB Location (1881): W Scotland; also London,. from Mag Dhuibhfinn, see McGaffin . 2 English, Scottish: see Geffen .
Sources 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Giffen 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 | 988 | 1 in 337K | 1.1K | Giffen | 3 |
| BE Belgium | 1 | 1 in 12M | 1 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | — | — | — | Giffen | 1 |
| EE Estonia | — | — | listed | — | — |
988 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; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register). 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)
Giffen is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Dutch, plural of gif
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)
- Robert Giffenb. 1837GBBritish statistician (1837-1910)
- George Giffenb. 1859AUAustralian cricketer (1859-1927)
- Walter Giffenb. 1861AUAustralian cricketer (1861-1949)
- Brad Giffenb. 1901CACanadian journalist
- Malcolm Hutchison Giffenb. 1902botanist
- Keith Giffenb. 1911AUAustralian rules footballer (1911-1983)
- Fred Giffinb. 1920AUnot in their usual nameAustralian weightlifter
- James Giffenb. 1941USAmerican businessman
- Keith Giffenb. 1952USAmerican comic writer (1952–2023)
- R Giffenarchaeologist
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 10 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.1K | #23,737 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.1K | #22,612 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 988 | #25,115 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 1 | #183,936 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Giffen mean, and where does it come from?
- Main GB Location (1881): W Scotland; also London,. from Mag Dhuibhfinn, see McGaffin . 2 English, Scottish: see Geffen . Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and 1 other source.
- In which country does Giffen have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 988 people named Giffen, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled giffen.
- Where is Giffen most common?
- Giffen is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 337 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Giffen?
- In the United States, the national register counted 988 people named Giffen in 2010, about 1 in 337 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Giffen?
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/giffenThe 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, “Giffen”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.