Ruff
surname · Latin script
Meaning: A circular frill or ruffle on a garment, especially a starched, fluted frill at the neck in Elizabethan and Jacobean England (1560s–1620s)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ɹəf/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ruff is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 18K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 22K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 24K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 417 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 18K (inferred from the name graph)
15,383 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Germany, 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)
A circular frill or ruffle on a garment, especially a starched, fluted frill at the neck in Elizabethan and Jacobean England (1560s–1620s).
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ruff 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 15,383 | 1 in 22K | 15K | Ruff | 417 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈4,600 est. | ≈1 in 18K | listed | Ruff | 132 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 24K | 2K | Ruff | 136 |
| DZ Algeria | #916 | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Ruff | 2 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 58K | — | Ruff | 6 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈230 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Ruff | 7 |
15,383 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral 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)
Ruff 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 German, Familienname aus der Kurzform von Rudolf; zeigt die monophthongische Variante u/ü gegenüber uo/ue. 1851 Träger.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
In Luxembourgish, reputation
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)
- Otto Ruffb. 1871DEGerman chemist (1871–1939)
- Ludwig Ruffb. 1878DEGerman architect (1878–1934)
- Siegfried Ruffb. 1907DEGerman physician; defendant at the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial (1907-1989)
- Ian Ruffb. 1946AUsailor
- Thomas Ruffb. 1958DEGerman photographer (born 1958)
- Lindy Ruffb. 1960CACanadian ice hockey player and coach
- Matt Ruffb. 1965USAmerican writer
- Michelle Ruffb. 1967USAmerican voice actress
- Éric Rufb. 1969FRnot in their usual nameFrench actor, designer and theatre director
- Leon Ruffb. 1996USAmerican professional wrestler
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 36 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 15K | #2,369 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 15K | #2,220 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 15K | #2,417 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 2K | #3,660 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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
- How do you pronounce Ruff?
- A machine transcription gives /ɹəf/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Ruff mean, and where does it come from?
- A circular frill or ruffle on a garment, especially a starched, fluted frill at the neck in Elizabethan and Jacobean England (1560s–1620s). Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Ruff have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 15 thousand people named Ruff, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ruff.
- How common is the name Ruff?
- In the United States, the national register counted 15,383 people named Ruff in 2010, about 1 in 22 thousand residents.
- How common is Ruff compared with other names?
- In Algeria, Ruff is the 916th most common surname of 89,473 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ruff?
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/ruffThe 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, “Ruff” — the 916th most common surname in Algeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.