Zafar

given name · Urdu · Latin script

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

Zafar is a given name, most frequently recorded in India. In Pakistan it is the 23rd most common given name. It appears chiefly in Urdu and Hindi, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: victory; triumph.

rarermore common
  • BHBahrain1 in 334◐
  • UZUzbekistan1 in 511
  • TJTajikistan1 in 684

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

≈2.6K ●

across 3 countries

3 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
234 ●

385K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 18K ◐

Kazakhstan

Spellings & scripts●

ZafarLatin · Urdu●151K records
ЗафарCyrillic · Uzbek●48K records
জাফরBengali · Bangla●536 records

6 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Jaafar in MY Malaysia, FR France, PH Philippines and 5 more, Jafar in IN India, NG Nigeria, SY Syria and 3 more, Зафар in RU Russia, UZ Uzbekistan, KZ Kazakhstan and 2 more and Джафар in UA Ukraine, AZ Azerbaijan.

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●

victory; triumph

Sources 1

  • Muslim baby names (our 2,000 meaningful and beautiful names for boys and girls) English-Urdu with Roman

Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Zafar is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India—306,086165K rec.—1.3KJafar101
PK Pakistan#23130,2528.2K rec.—listedZafar127
MY Malaysia—76,51136K rec.——Jaafar82
RU Russia#62735,61824K rec.—#1,062Зафар107
UZ Uzbekistan#6326,5981.9K rec.—listedЗафар34
NG Nigeria#8999,90212K rec.—listedJafar47
SA Saudi Arabia#1526,9101.8K rec.—listedZafar79
SY Syria#9056,41412K rec.——Jafar25
TJ Tajikistan#816,103434 rec.—listedЗафар14
GB United Kingdom—5,7706.6K rec.——Zafar104
ID Indonesia—4,7392.2K rec.—listedJafar106
FR France—4,1404.2K rec.—109Jaafar173

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

Languages●

  • Urdu151K52%
  • Hindi51K17%
  • 26K9%
  • English19K6%
  • Arabic8.3K3%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Urdu150,84952%
Hindi50,54317%
26,3619%
English18,5306%
Arabic8,2543%

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◐

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

  • a separate given name47K records spelled Zafar4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Pakistan, United States, Uzbekistan

    Also written Ẓafar, Z̤afar, Zäfär

  • Indonesian given name4.8K records spelled Zafar5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Za'Far, Zafàŕ

  • French given name3.9K records spelled Zafar4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Spain, United States, United Kingdom

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Źãfär, Ẓafar

  • Polish given name1.0K records spelled Zafar6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States, United Kingdom, Pakistan

    Also written Zäfär, Źąfąř, Źãfąř, Żâfâŕ, Žåfår

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.

Other recorded senses●

Zafar 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 Galician, to let off, spare, free

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Spanish, to loosen; to untie

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Arabic, victory. See Nasr j.25

    as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim 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●

0255075100194019601980200081 · 1992

Show as table
Zafar in naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls), India, 1923–2015
Yearrecords
19232
19241
19311
19331
19342
19352
19361
19371
19381
19405
19419
19423
19433
19445
19454
19462
19472
19486
19494
19503
19517
19527
195310
195415
195516
19567
195719
195824
195917
196019
19618
196219
196328
196421
196514
196625
196730
196823
196920
197036
197140
197235
197334
197434
197526
197627
197725
197833
197924
19808
198118
198229
198336
198438
198543
198629
198747
198846
198948
199044
199151
199281
199370
199468
199573
199680
199766
199848
199910
20082
20106
201415
20152

IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) — 73 years between 1923–2015. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1850190019502000Zafar Ali Khan, b. 1873Zafar Usmanov, b. 1937Zafer Ergin, b. 1942Zafar Bangash, b. 1950Zafar Iqbal, b. 1950Zafar Guliyev, b. 1972Zafar Rushdie, b. 1979Zafar Majmadov, b. 1987

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 56 sources across 28 countries.

Official registers attesting Zafar
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaIndia Names Dataset — Andhra Pradesh Electoral Rolls (Internet Archive)—4.4K#1,140
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020202.6K#11,529
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.9K#15,692
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20201.2K#10,733
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020001K#23,191
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—668#973
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—619#6,721
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—619#6,713
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—619#7,858
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—330#4,563
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—261#3,405
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—258#3,942

Reference works 6

  • 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 surname tokens
  • 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 2026-09-12 data build · 217 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Zafar?
We estimate roughly 2.6 thousand people bear Zafar (counting its spellings and scripts) across 3 countries in our records.
In which country does Zafar have the most bearers?
Zafar is most frequently recorded in India, where it is most often spelled jafar.
How common is Zafar compared with other names?
In Pakistan, Zafar is the 23rd most common given name of 75,254 given names recorded there.
Is Zafar a male or female name?
Zafar 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 Zafar mean?
Recorded meaning: victory; triumph
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/zafar

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, “Zafar” — the 23rd most common given name in Pakistan. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Zafar parses inside a full name →