Riffe

surname · Latin script

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 4 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020

Pronunciation:Explore pronunciation →

Riffe is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 3,078 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2010.

  • JMJamaica≈1 in 23Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 108K
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 120K

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)

3,078 people, 2010

Record sources
288 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 23K (inferred from the name graph)

Jamaica, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin

No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Riffe is found

(measured from records)

Riffe 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 Riffe is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States3,0781 in 108K3.1KRiffe288
GB United Kingdom≈560 est.≈1 in 124K—Riffe19
CA Canada≈270 est.≈1 in 152K—Riffe9
PH Philippines≈170 est.≈1 in 699K—Riffe2
AU Australia≈150 est.≈1 in 187K—Riffe7
JM Jamaica≈120 est.≈1 in 23K—Riffe1
IE Ireland≈72 est.≈1 in 75K—Riffe3

3,078 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 2000. 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)

Riffe is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Riffë, Riffé

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States

    Also written Riffé

  • Norwegian surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States

    Languages: Norwegian, Swedish, Danish

    Also written Rīffe

36 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)

Riffe is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In German, nominative/accusative/genitive plural of Riff

    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)
1900192019401960Jed Riffe, b. 1901Vernal G. Riffe, Jr., b. 1925Guy Riffe, b. 1947

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 Riffe,
InformalHello,

Evidence

(measured from records)

8 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 4 countries.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

Which countries have the most people with the surname Riffe?
In the United States, the national register counted about 3.1 thousand people named Riffe, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled riffe. After it come United Kingdom, Canada, Philippines and Australia; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Riffe?
In the United States, the national register counted 3,078 people named Riffe in 2010, about 1 in 108 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Riffe?

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

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, “Riffe” — ranked 9498th in the United States (Census Bureau). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Riffe parses inside a full name →