Ralf

given name · German · Latin script

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

Ralf is a given name, most frequently recorded in Germany, where it is the 28th most common given name. It appears chiefly in German and Portuguese, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: usually from OG Radulf, source of Fr Raoul and Norman Radulf/Raulf; first attested Radulf, Radolf 1066 DB.

rarermore common
  • DEGermany1 in 231◐
  • CACanada1 in 1.2K
  • NZNew Zealand1 in 1.3K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈176K ●

across 11 countries

#711 ●

of 16M given names

5 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
518 ●

3.7M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 2.0K ◐

United States

Spellings & scripts●

RalphLatin · English●3M records
רלףHebrew · Hebrew●2.1K records
РальфCyrillic · Russian●720 records
레이프Hangul · Korean●1 records
ΡαλφGreek · Greek●0 records

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Ralph in US United States, GB United Kingdom, CA Canada and 18 more, רלף in FR France, IL Israel and Ral'F in LV Latvia.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

usually from OG Radulf, source of Fr Raoul and Norman Radulf/Raulf; first attested Radulf, Radolf 1066 DB

Sources 1

  • A Dictionary of English Surnames

Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Ralf is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#28525,640464K rec.——Ralf273
US United States#185162,3212.6M rec.1 in 2K162KRalph518
GB United Kingdom#232147,935150K rec.—572Ralph205
CA Canada#20268,47770K rec.—4Ralph187
PH Philippines#37857,32744K rec.——Ralph146
AU Australia#36552,08458K rec.—51Ralph179
IT Italy#36320,57922K rec.—1Ralph67
AT Austria#2679,8304.1K rec.—724Ralph109
RU Russia—8,4288.7K rec.——Ralph72
SG Singapore#757,6298K rec.——Ralph47
NZ New Zealand#1036,6696.9K rec.—15Ralph81
GR Greece#2035,4615.6K rec.——Ralph39

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • German469K80%
  • Portuguese46K8%
  • English21K4%
  • Finnish11K2%
  • Spanish6.7K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
German468,54080%
Portuguese45,7568%
English21,3244%
Finnish10,5982%
Spanish6,6761%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Ralf is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Portuguese given name56K records spelled Ralf6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, Philippines, Spain, United States

    Languages: Portuguese, Spanish

    Also written Ral'F, Rälf

  • French given name3.2K records spelled Ralf2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Belgium, Netherlands

    Also written Ral'F

  • a separate given name2.4K records spelled Ralf3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Switzerland, India, Netherlands

    Also written Ṛalf, Rālf

  • Indonesian given name721 records spelled Ralf3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Philippines, United States, Netherlands

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Ral'F

45 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●

Ralf is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In German, ) Ralph: im 19. Jh. aus dem Eng­ lischen übernommener männl. Vom., der auf altnord.

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

  • In Swedish, Ralf är övertaget från engelskan, motsvarande fornengelskans Rædwulf och fornvästnordiskans Ráðulfr, sammansatt av Råd- ’råd; beslut; hjälp’ och → -ulf. I den rikssvenska almanackan 27 mars och i den finlandssvenska 27 augusti.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • In French, Variante germanique de Raoul/Ralph, de rad « conseil » + wulf « loup »; forme liée aux noms de saints Raoul/Ralph.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

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.

Over time●

0510152019201940196019802000202019 · 1963

Show as table
Ralf in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1920–2024
Yearrecords
19208
19215
19228
19237
19258
19265
19276
19296
19305
19319
19375
19395
19415
19457
19519
19548
19556
19566
19579
19589
19598
196011
196110
19628
196319
196413
196514
19665
19675
196811
19696
19705
19716
19725
19745
19755
19766
19776
19805
19945
20155
20245

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 42 years between 1920–2024. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1850190019502000Ralph Linton, b. 1893Ralf Wolter, b. 1926Ralf Dahrendorf, b. 1929Ralf D. Bode, b. 1941Ralf Hütter, b. 1946Ralf Rangnick, b. 1958Ralf Moeller, b. 1959Ralf König, b. 1960Ralf Schumacher, b. 1975Ralf Fährmann, b. 1988

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).

Evidence●

Attested in 71 sources across 35 countries.

Official registers attesting Ralf
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—3.8K#727
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—3.4K#4,272
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)20222.9K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—2.9K#4,004
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—2.9K#877
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—2.6K#583
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—2.4K#1,241
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20202.2K—
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—1.5K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20201.5K#9,384
EE EstoniaStatistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed)—676#228
AT AustriaStatistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024)2023571#1,229

Reference works 5

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name 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 2026-09-12 data build · 340 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Ralf?
We estimate roughly 176 thousand people bear Ralf (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
In which country does Ralf have the most bearers?
Ralf is most frequently recorded in Germany, where it is most often spelled ralf.
How common is Ralf compared with other names?
In Germany, Ralf is the 28th most common given name of 154,506 given names recorded there.
Is Ralf a male or female name?
Ralf is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Ralf mean?
Recorded meaning: usually from OG Radulf, source of Fr Raoul and Norman Radulf/Raulf; first attested Radulf, Radolf 1066 DB
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ralf

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

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, “Ralf” — the 28th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Ralf parses inside a full name →