Rafí

surname · Latin script

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

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

Rafí is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Borrowed from Arabic رَافِع (rāfiʕ, “hoister, exalter, raiser”) or رَفِيع (rafīʕ, “elevated, high, noble”). This surname is predominantly found in Bangladesh.

rarermore common
  • ESSpain1 in 1.3M(measured from records)
  • SESweden1 in 38K
  • GYGuyana1 in 38K

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.

United States (measured from records)

1,491 people, 2020

Sources
91 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 38K (inferred from the name graph)

Sweden

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Rafi in ES Spain, US United States, DO Dominican Republic.

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)

Borrowed from Arabic رَافِع (rāfiʕ, “hoister, exalter, raiser”) or رَفِيع (rafīʕ, “elevated, high, noble”). This surname is predominantly found in Bangladesh.

Sources 4

  • Muslim baby names (our 2,000 meaningful and beautiful names for boys and girls) English-Urdu with Roman
  • TDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)
  • Wiktionary
  • Nordic Names

Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Rafí 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 Rafí is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—1,4911 in 223K1.5KRafi91
BR Brazil—3481 in 608K348——
SE Sweden—2721 in 38K272—3
DK Denmark—411 in 143K49——
ES Spain—381 in 1.3M309Rafi57
FI Finland—291 in 192K66—2
GY Guyana—201 in 38K20——
DO Dominican Republic#893≈2 est.≈1 in 4.8M—Rafi17

1,491 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)

Rafí is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Hindi given name112 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Pakistan, Bangladesh

    Languages: Hindi, English, Urdu

    Also written Rafi, Raffi, Rafee, রাফি, Rafie

  • French given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, United States, Spain

    Also written Rafi, Räfį, Rãfï

2 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.

How to address them(machine-generated)

FormalEstimado Sr. Rafí,Dear Mr Rafí, (English)
InformalHola Rafí,Hi Rafí, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Rafí under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Rafí mean, and where does it come from?
Borrowed from Arabic رَافِع (rāfiʕ, “hoister, exalter, raiser”) or رَفِيع (rafīʕ, “elevated, high, noble”). This surname is predominantly found in Bangladesh. Recorded by Muslim baby names (our 2,000 meaningful and beautiful names for boys and girls) English-Urdu with Roman and TDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary) and 2 other sources.
How do you pronounce Rafí?
A machine transcription gives /ɾafi/ (IPA) for Spanish.
In which country does Rafí have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 1.5 thousand people named Rafí, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rafi.
Where is Rafí most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Rafí is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 38 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Rafí?
In the United States, the national register counted 1,491 people named Rafí in 2020, about 1 in 223 thousand residents.
How common is Rafí compared with other names?
In the Dominican Republic, Rafí is the 893rd most common given name of 44,971 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Rafí?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/raf%C3%AD

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, “Rafí” — the 893rd most common given name in Dominican Republic. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Rafí parses inside a full name →