Tesfaye

surname · Amharic · Latin script

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

Tesfaye is a surname, most frequently recorded in Ethiopia, where it is the 6th most common surname. It appears chiefly in Amharic and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Amharic/Tigrinya (Ethiopia): 'my hope'.

rarermore common
  • ETEthiopia1 in 280◐
  • SESweden1 in 11K
  • USUnited States1 in 233K

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

≈1.8K ●

across 10 countries

2 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
177 ●

20K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 30K ◐

Norway

Spellings & scripts●

TesfayeLatin · Amharic●13K records
ተስፋዬEthiopic · Amharic●5.1K records

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●

Amharic/Tigrinya (Ethiopia): 'my hope'

Sources 1

  • African Names

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Tesfaye is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ET Ethiopia#612,49212K rec.—listedTesfaye51
US United States—1,4275.6K rec.1 in 233K2.4KTesfaye177
SE Sweden#7161,0971.2K rec.—183Tesfaye19
GB United Kingdom—249207 rec.——Tesfaye34
NO Norway—180△51 rec.1 in 30K180Tesfaye14
CA Canada—108195 rec.——Tesfaye24
ZA South Africa—102279 rec.——Tesfaye11
CH Switzerland—920 rec.1 in 91K92—4
FI Finland—48△6 rec.1 in 116K61—6
NL Netherlands—2867 rec.1 in 617K28Tesfaye11
IN India—2713 rec.——Tesfaye14
CN China—240 rec.——Tesfaye5

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

Languages●

  • Amharic13K44%
  • English6.3K22%
  • 5.6K19%
  • Arabic9213%
  • French9013%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Amharic12,56844%
English6,32422%
5,58919%
Arabic9213%
French9013%

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◐

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

  • English surname13K records spelled Tesfaye7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Ethiopia, Sweden, United Kingdom

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Tësfãye, Těśfāýě

  • a separate surname9.8K records spelled Tesfaye2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Ethiopia, United States, United Kingdom

    Also written Tesfayé

  • Spanish surname1.1K records spelled Tesfaye3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Mexico, Ethiopia, Spain

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Tēsfåyê

48 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●

Tesfaye 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.

  • (m/f) My hope

    as a nameA Handbook of African Names

  • My hope.

    as a nameThe African book of names

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●

0102030402000200520102015202039 · 2014

Show as table
Tesfaye in SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023), Sweden, 1999–2020
Yearrecords
199923
200024
200125
200226
200327
200429
200528
200628
200730
200831
200935
201037
201138
201237
201338
201439
201538
201638
201738
201838
201938
202038

SE SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) — 22 years between 1999–2020. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

192019401960198020002020Gebreyesus Tesfaye, b. 1935Mattias Tesfaye, b. 1981Dereje Tesfaye, b. 1985Siyoum Tesfaye, b. 1989The Weekend, b. 1990Aster Tesfaye, b. 1990Homiyu Tesfaye, b. 1993Haftamnesh Tesfay, b. 1994Derese Tesfaye, b. 2001

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 28 sources across 15 countries.

Official registers attesting Tesfaye
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020202.4K#12,374
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.4K#19,075
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020878#13,462
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000681#31,986
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—183#5,559
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—180#8,731
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—162#4,921
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—102#7,608
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)202492#11,837
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—61#6,972
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—48#28,745
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—45#9,971

Reference works 3

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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 · 57 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Tesfaye?
We estimate roughly 1.8 thousand people bear Tesfaye (counting its spellings and scripts) across 10 countries in our records.
In which country does Tesfaye have the most bearers?
Tesfaye is most frequently recorded in Ethiopia, where it is most often spelled tesfaye.
How common is Tesfaye compared with other names?
In Ethiopia, Tesfaye is the 6th most common surname of 32,099 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Tesfaye mean?
Recorded meaning: Amharic/Tigrinya (Ethiopia): 'my hope'
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/tesfaye

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, “Tesfaye” — the 6th most common surname in Ethiopia. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Tesfaye parses inside a full name →