Jaafar
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Personal name also appearing as Jafer, Jaffar and Jaffari
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ʒaafar/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jaafar is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Pakistan than in any other country, where it is the 19th most common given name.
- MAMorocco≈1 in 7.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- ESSpain1 in 183K
- TJTajikistan≈1 in 675as Zafar
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 Jaafar 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.
- Pakistan (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 278 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 7.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈160,000 named Zafar, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Morocco, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Zafar in PK Pakistan, AE United Arab Emirates, ES Spain, Зафар in UZ Uzbekistan, TJ Tajikistan, Jafar in NG Nigeria and Jafor in BD Bangladesh.
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)
Personal name also appearing as Jafer, Jaffar and Jaffari.
Sources 1
- African Muslim Names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jaafar 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PK Pakistan | #19 | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | listed | Zafar | 144 |
| BD Bangladesh | #254 | ≈43,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.8K | listed | Jafor | 61 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 9.4K | listed | Jafar | 47 |
| UZ Uzbekistan | #64 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | listed | Зафар | 39 |
| TJ Tajikistan | #91 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 675 | listed | Зафар | 14 |
| MA Morocco | — | ≈4,600 est. | ≈1 in 7.8K | listed | Jaafar | 69 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | #173 | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 3.6K | — | Zafar | 81 |
| ES Spain | — | 273 | 1 in 183K | 619 | Zafar | 35 |
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: INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal). 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)
Jaafar 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.
In Arabic, small river, rivulet
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
small river
as a nameWhats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names
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)
- Aziz Jaafarb. 1935SGSingaporean actor, singer, director and screenwriter (1935–2005)
- Jaafar Jaafarb. 1978NGNigerian Journalist
- Maha Jaafarb. 1994SDSudanese-Iraqi activist and social media influencer
- Hamoody Jaafaractor
- Fehmi JaafarCAPh.D. Université de Montréal 2014
- Rosidah JaafarGBresearcher
- Jafariah Jaafarresearcher
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 46 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 203 | #16,403 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 203 | #16,320 |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Jaafar mean, and where does it come from?
- Personal name also appearing as Jafer, Jaffar and Jaffari. Recorded by African Muslim Names.
- How do you pronounce Jaafar?
- A machine transcription gives /ʒaafar/ (IPA) for Malay.
- In which country does Jaafar have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 158 thousand people named Zafar in Pakistan, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Jaafar?
- In Spain, the national register counted 273 people named Jaafar, about 1 in 183 thousand residents.
- How common is Jaafar compared with other names?
- In Pakistan, Jaafar is the 19th most common given name of 77,659 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Jaafar?
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/jaafarThe 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, “Jaafar” — the 19th most common given name in Pakistan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.