Rife

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Widespread, common, prevalent, current (mainly of unpleasant or harmful things)

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

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

Rife is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 50K(measured from records)
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 77K
  • BZBelize≈1 in 10K

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.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈29,000 people, est.

Sources
336 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 10K (inferred from the name graph)

Belize, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Widespread, common, prevalent, current (mainly of unpleasant or harmful things).

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Where in the world(measured from records)

Rife 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 Rife is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈29,000 est.≈1 in 49K—Rife5
US United States—6,6201 in 50K6.6KRife336
GB United Kingdom—≈850 est.≈1 in 77K—Rife24
PH Philippines—≈550 est.≈1 in 200K—Rife18
IT Italy—≈380 est.≈1 in 166K—Rife5
SG Singapore—≈100 est.≈1 in 60K—Rife1
JM Jamaica#911≈62 est.≈1 in 45K—Rife1
BZ Belize#120≈39 est.≈1 in 10K—Rife1

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. 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)

Rife is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Argentina, Philippines, Spain

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Rifé

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Rifé

  • French surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Morocco

    Also written Rifé, Rifë

  • Arabic surname9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Egypt, United States, Morocco, Algeria

    Also written Rifé, Rifè, Rïfë, Řïfe, Rīfê

  • Hindi surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, India

    Languages: Hindi, Sinhala, Urdu

    Also written Rìfê

  • Thai surname48 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand, United States, Laos, United Kingdom

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written รูฟ, รฟ, Reeve, Ruf, ร์ฟ

44 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.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Rife 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 Portuguese, Rif (a traditional region in northern Morocco)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Galician, inflection of rifar:

    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)

1850190019502000Royal Rife, b. 1888Joaquim Rifé, b. 1942Jack Rife, b. 1943Matt Rife, b. 1995

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)

FormalDear Rife,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 14 sources across 7 countries.

Official registers attesting Rife
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020106.6K#5,268
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020006.4K#5,031
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020206.3K#5,341
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • 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 Rife mean, and where does it come from?
Widespread, common, prevalent, current (mainly of unpleasant or harmful things). Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Rife?
A machine transcription gives /ɹaɪf/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Rife have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 29 thousand people named Rife in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rife.
How common is the name Rife?
In the United States, the national register counted 6,620 people named Rife in 2010, about 1 in 50 thousand residents.
How common is Rife compared with other names?
In Belize, Rife is the 120th most common surname of 11,408 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Rife?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

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, “Rife” — the 120th most common surname in Belize. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Rife parses inside a full name →