Salif

given name · French · Latin script

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

Salif is a given name, with more bearers in France than in any other country. In Mali it is the 43rd most common given name. It appears chiefly in French and Turkish, written in the Latin script.

rarermore common
  • FRFrance1 in 88K
  • BFBurkina Faso1 in 829
  • SNSenegal1 in 1.2K

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

≈1.4K

across 10 countries

Sources
155

7.5K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 88K

France

Meaning & origin

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

Where in the world

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

Where Salif is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
FR France7704.6K rec.1 in 88K770Salif155
CI Côte d’Ivoire#763600626 rec.245Salif19
SN Senegal#95550172 rec.13Salif21
ES Spain417111 rec.1 in 120K417Salif20
BF Burkina Faso#57417438 rec.Salif15
ML Mali#43319296 rec.5Salif23
US United States184444 rec.1 in 1.8M184Salif48
CM Cameroon#90681103 rec.Salif5
BE Belgium7680 rec.8Salif13
IT Italy7490 rec.3Salif10
DZ Algeria68110 rec.Salif3
TR Türkiye4296 rec.Salif4

Roughly 770 people in France bear this name (about 1 in 88K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.

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

Languages

  • French9.5K51%
  • Turkish2.2K12%
  • French (Côte d’Ivoire)1.2K7%
  • Spanish1.2K6%
  • Bulgarian6684%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
French9,54051%
Turkish2,22812%
French (Côte d’Ivoire)1,2117%
Spanish1,1686%
Bulgarian6684%

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

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

  • English given name1.7K records spelled Salif6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Germany, Nigeria, Spain

    Languages: English, German, Western Frisian

    Also written Sālįf, Sålìf

  • Bulgarian given name1.2K records spelled Salif7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Bulgaria, Türkiye

    Languages: Bulgarian, Croatian

    Also written Салиф

  • Hindi given name314 records spelled Salif3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Senegal, United States, Pakistan

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Sâlïf

50 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.

Over time

0510152005201020152020202511 · 2010

Show as table
Salif in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 2001–2025
Yearrecords
20015
20046
20067
20085
20097
201011
20115
20136
20169
20177
20197
20236
20256

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)13 years between 2001–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name

1940196019802000Salif Keïta, b. 1946Salif Diallo, b. 1957Salif Traoré, b. 1972Salif Diao, b. 1977A'salfo, b. 1979Salif, b. 1981Salif Sané, b. 1990Salif Cissé, b. 1993Salif Cissé, b. 1994

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 32 sources across 22 countries.

Official registers attesting Salif
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)2024770#1,005
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)417#5,174
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)335#2,815
CI Côte d’Ivoirenomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies245#1,801
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020184#39,388
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls31#6,705
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)28#17,804
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)25#23,029
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)25#21,606
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)22#79,277
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)22#78,058
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)15#29,044

Reference works 2

  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • 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 · 74 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Salif?
We estimate roughly 1.4 thousand people bear Salif (counting its spellings and scripts) across 10 countries in our records.
In which country does Salif have the most bearers?
We estimate about 770 people bear Salif in France, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled salif.
How common is Salif compared with other names?
In Mali, Salif is the 43rd most common given name of 1,827 given names recorded there.
Is Salif a male or female name?
Salif 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.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/salif

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, “Salif” — the 43rd most common given name in Mali. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Salif parses inside a full name →