Rifai
surname · Latin script
Meaning: elevated
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/rˈifa͡ɪ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Rifai is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Indonesia than in any other country.
- IDIndonesia≈1 in 5.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- SYSyria≈1 in 10K
- USUnited States1 in 948K
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.
- Indonesia (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 160 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈46,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Indonesia, est.
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)
elevated
Sources 1
- Whats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Rifai 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ID Indonesia | #200 | ≈46,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.8K | listed | Rifai | 160 |
| MA Morocco | #818 | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Rifai | 48 |
| SY Syria | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Rifai | 22 |
| IN India | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.1M | 22 | Rifai | 26 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈980 est. | ≈1 in 106K | — | Rifai | 41 |
| LB Lebanon | #691 | ≈710 est. | ≈1 in 7.7K | — | Rifai | 42 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | — | ≈370 est. | ≈1 in 27K | — | Rifai | 53 |
| US United States | — | 351 | 1 in 948K | 425 | Rifai | 147 |
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; the in-instate-surnames-bystate 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)
Rifai 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 Galician, second-person plural imperative of rifar
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Italian, inflection of rifare:
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)
- Ghassan Rifaib. 1929LBLebanese intellectual
- Samir Rifaib. 1966JOJordanian politician
- Oula A. Alrifaib. 1986SYnot in their usual nameSyrian activist
- Oliver Rifaib. 1993NLDutch footballer
- Mouatasem Alrifaib. 1998SYnot in their usual nameMouatasem Alrifai is an award-winning Syrian politician, author, human rights activist and Senior Policy and Advocacy Advisor based in Germany.
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 27 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 425 | #52,687 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 351 | #57,914 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 231 | #77,222 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 22 | #8,544 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 12 | #1,596 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Rifai mean, and where does it come from?
- elevated Recorded by Whats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names.
- How do you pronounce Rifai?
- A machine transcription gives /rˈifa͡ɪ/ (IPA) for Indonesian.
- In which country does Rifai have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 46 thousand people named Rifai in Indonesia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rifai.
- How common is the name Rifai?
- In the United States, the national register counted 351 people named Rifai in 2010, about 1 in 948 thousand residents.
- How common is Rifai compared with other names?
- In Indonesia, Rifai is the 200th most common surname of 451,395 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Rifai?
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/rifaiThe 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, “Rifai” — the 200th most common surname in Indonesia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.