Rafail
given name · Latin script
Meaning: "God rested." Russianization of Raphael
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 23 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Rafail is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country.
- AZAzerbaijan≈1 in 3.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- BGBulgaria≈1 in 42K
- TRTürkiye≈1 in 850K
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 Rafail itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 393 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.3K (inferred from the name graph)
873,321 named Rafael, 2022
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Azerbaijan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Raphael in FR France, ES Spain, US United States, Рафаэль in RU Russia, Rafael in EC Ecuador and Рафаель in 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)"God rested." Russianization of Raphael.
Cited for this meaning 1
- A Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Rafail 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | — | 873,321as Rafael | 1 in 242 | 873K | — | 5 |
| ES Spain | — | 217,304as Rafael | 1 in 230 | 225K | Raphael | 51 |
| US United States | — | 148,942as Rafael | 1 in 2.2K | 149K | Raphael | 293 |
| RU Russia | #160 | ≈33,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.3K | register #141 | Рафаэль | 159 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 27,716as Rafael | 1 in 610 | 28K | Rafael | 8 |
| FR France | #109 | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | 158K | Raphael | 393 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 18,135as Rafael | 1 in 281 | 18K | — | — |
| FI Finland | — | 5,958as Rafael | 1 in 935 | 14K | Рафаель | 8 |
| AZ Azerbaijan | — | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | 16 | Рафаил | 25 |
873,321 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022. 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: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INEC — civil registry names; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Azerbaijan Ministry of Justice — Civil Registry Name Statistics. 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)Rafail 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 Russian, de repha'el, Dieu guérit. Fête : 8 (21) novembre. Raphaël est son équivalent français. Fête : 29 septembre. 111
as a nameRussian Names
In Scottish Gaelic, raffle
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)- Raphael Popovb. 1830BGBulgarian priest
- Rafail Levitskyb. 1847RURussian painter (1844-1937)
- Rafail Brusilovskyb. 1894UARussian writer (1894-1971)
- Rafael Kaprelyanb. 1909AZnot in their usual namemerited test pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union (1909-1984)
- Rafail Perelshtejnb. 1909UASoviet film director (1909-1978)
- Rafail Belkinb. 1922RUSoviet criminalist (1922–2001)
- Raimond Turkoniakb. 1949USnot in their usual nameUkrainian Greek Catholic bishop
- Rafail Ostrovskyb. 1963USAmerican cryptographer
- Rafail Mamasb. 2001CYCypriot association football player
- Vasileios Rafail Kiossesb. 2002GRbadminton 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)39 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 23 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 158 | #116,774 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 158 | #111,426 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 149 | #109,915 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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 Rafail mean, and where does it come from?
- "God rested." Russianization of Raphael. Recorded by A Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996).
- What are other forms of the name Rafail?
- In the etymology graph, Rafael, Raphael and Raphaël are forms of the same name in other languages.
- Is Rafail a male or female name?
- Rafail is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: United States (Census Bureau, 2020).
- In which country does Rafail have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 873 thousand people named Rafael, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Rafail?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 873,321 people named Rafael in 2022, about 1 in 242 residents.
- How common is Rafail compared with other names?
- In France, Rafail is the 109th most common given name of 754,146 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Rafail?
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/rafailThe 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, “Rafail” — the 109th most common given name in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.