Kalifa
surname · Latin script
Meaning: successor; Constantine, Batna, Biskra, Bone, Guelma, Setif, Philippeville, Ain Temouchent, Oran, Algiers, Mascara, Tunisia
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kalifa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kalifa is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Côte d’Ivoire than in any other country.
- FRFrance≈1 in 106K(inferred from the name graph)
- LYLibya≈1 in 16K
- TNTunisia≈1 in 16K
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.
- Côte d’Ivoire (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 162 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 16K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,100 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Libya, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
successor; Constantine, Batna, Biskra, Bone, Guelma, Setif, Philippeville, Ain Temouchent, Oran, Algiers, Mascara, Tunisia
Sources 1
- Dicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kalifa 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 25K | 163 | — | 5 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈970 est. | ≈1 in 220K | listed | Kalifa | 12 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈880 est. | ≈1 in 118K | — | Kalifa | 36 |
| TN Tunisia | #748 | ≈720 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Kalifa | 13 |
| FR France | — | ≈640 est. | ≈1 in 106K | 68 | Kalifa | 162 |
| LY Libya | — | ≈430 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Kalifa | 16 |
| CM Cameroon | — | ≈390 est. | ≈1 in 72K | — | Kalifa | 5 |
| SN Senegal | — | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 46K | — | Kalifa | 4 |
| US United States | — | 147 | 1 in 2.3M | 196 | Kalifa | 50 |
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: INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies. 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)
Kalifa is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Holy child
as a nameThe book of African names
Chaste, holy.
as a nameThe African book of names
In Polish, genitive singular of kalif
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Hungarian, caliph
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)
- Tony Murrayb. 1920FRnot in their usual nameFrench-born British businessman (1920–2023)
- Dominique Kalifab. 1957FRFrench historian (1957-2020)
- Sahim Omar Kalifab. 1980BEbelgian-Kurdish filmmaker, born 1980
- Rohinton "Ron" KalifaBritish entrepreneur
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 35 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 196 | #98,894 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies | — | 163 | #2,539 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 147 | #118,185 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 91 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 78 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 76 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 68 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 33 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 15 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 7 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 6 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 2 | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Kalifa mean, and where does it come from?
- successor; Constantine, Batna, Biskra, Bone, Guelma, Setif, Philippeville, Ain Temouchent, Oran, Algiers, Mascara, Tunisia Recorded by Dicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,….
- How do you pronounce Kalifa?
- A machine transcription gives /kalifa/ (IPA) for French.
- In which country does Kalifa have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.1 thousand people named Kalifa in Côte d’Ivoire, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Kalifa?
- In the United States, the national register counted 147 people named Kalifa in 2010, about 1 in 2.3 million residents.
- How common is Kalifa compared with other names?
- In Tunisia, Kalifa is the 748th most common surname of 37,763 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kalifa?
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/kalifaThe 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, “Kalifa” — the 748th most common surname in Tunisia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.