Zafra
surname · Latin script
Meaning: so called, notably one in the province of Extremadura
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/θafɾa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Zafra is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country.
- ESSpain1 in 5.2K(measured from records)
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 10K
- PEPeru≈1 in 16K
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.
- Philippines (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 158 (measured from records)
- 1 in 5.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈11,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Spain
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
so called, notably one in the province of Extremadura. The placename is from OSp. zafra, (afra rock, crag (of Arabic origin). In some cases the surname may be a topographic name derived directly from the vocab. word. Zabatino see Sabbato Zaghetti see Deakin
Sources 1
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Zafra 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PH Philippines | #611 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Zafra | 67 |
| ES Spain | #424 | 9,599 | 1 in 5.2K | 9.6K | Zafra | 139 |
| CO Colombia | — | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 24K | 2 | Zafra | 74 |
| PE Peru | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Zafra | 49 |
| US United States | — | 940 | 1 in 354K | 969 | Zafra | 158 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 51 | 1 in 66K | 51 | Zafra | 3 |
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: INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; the co-datosgov-candidates register; INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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)
Zafra 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 Spanish, colander (kitchen utensil)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Galician, anvil
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)
- Nicolas Zafrab. 1892PHFilipino historian and academic (1892-1979)
- Amancio Muñoz de Zafrab. 1894ESSpanish politician (1894-1938)
- Antonio Escribano Zafrab. 1950ESSpanish physician
- Jessica Zafrab. 1965PHFilipino writer
- Óscar Sánchez Zafrab. 1969ESSpanish actor
- Remedios Zafrab. 1973ESSpanish writer
- César Zafra Hernándezb. 1984ESSpanish politician
- Layneker Zafrab. 1986VEVenezuelan association football player
- Marita Zafrab. 1994ESSpanish actress, dancer and model
- Xavi Viergeb. 1997ESnot in their usual nameSpanish motorcycle racer
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 9.6K | #579 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 9.6K | #579 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 969 | #26,524 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 940 | #26,067 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 657 | #32,900 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 51 | — |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 2 | #114 |
| 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
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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
- Where does the name Zafra come from?
- so called, notably one in the province of Extremadura. The placename is from OSp. zafra, (afra rock, crag (of Arabic origin). Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
- How do you pronounce Zafra?
- A machine transcription gives /θafɾa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What does the name Zafra mean?
- Recorded meaning: so called, notably one in the province of Extremadura.
- In which country does Zafra have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 11 thousand people named Zafra in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled zafra.
- Where is Zafra most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Zafra is densest in Spain — about 1 in 5.2 thousand people — even though Philippines holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Zafra?
- In Spain, the national register counted 9,599 people named Zafra, about 1 in 5.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Zafra compared with other names?
- In the Philippines, Zafra is the 611th most common surname of 876,464 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Zafra?
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/zafraThe 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, “Zafra” — the 611th most common surname in Philippines. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.