Phiri
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/faɪɹi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Phiri is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Zambia it is the most common surname. Recorded meaning: From phiri (“mountain”), with a new tone pattern applied.
- USUnited States1 in 1.1M(measured from records)
- FIFinland1 in 136K
- NONorway1 in 161K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 158 (measured from records)
- 1 in 136K (inferred from the name graph)
291 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From phiri (“mountain”), with a new tone pattern applied.
Sources 1
Where in the world(measured from records)
Phiri 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.
291 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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: Zambia top-100 surnames (surnam.es); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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)
Phiri is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Tswana, Means 'hyena'; a Sotho-Tswana clan/totem name.
as a wordsanames.co.za — South African surnames
In Nyanja, mountain, hill
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In seh, mountain
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Northern Sotho, hyena
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In tum, hill
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)
- Ray Phirib. 1947ZASouth African jazz musician (1947–2017)
- Virginia Phirib. 1954ZWZimbabwean author
- Benjamin Phirib. 1959ZMZambian Roman Catholic archbishop
- James Phirib. 1968ZMFootballer (1968-2001)
- Christopher Phirib. 1975ZWZimbabwean cricketer
- Topsy Phirib. 1980ZMbadminton player
- Edwin Phirib. 1983ZMZambian footballer
- Catherine Phirib. 1987ZMZambian boxer
- Gerald Phirib. 1988ZMZambian sprinter
- Vast Phirib. 1996ZMZambian footballer
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 30 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZM Zambia | Zambia top-100 surnames (surnam.es) | — | 377K | #1 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 414 | #53,865 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 291 | #67,747 |
| ZM Zambia | ECZ 2021 Councillor Elections — candidate results | 2021 | 162 | #1 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 41 | #27,225 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 34 | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 34 | #32,681 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 34 | #64,603 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 29 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 29 | #71,959 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 26 | #18,436 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 23 | #22,720 |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikipedia surname 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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Phiri mean, and where does it come from?
- From phiri (“mountain”), with a new tone pattern applied. Recorded by Wiktionary.
- How do you pronounce Phiri?
- A machine transcription gives /faɪɹi/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Phiri have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 291 people named Phiri, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled phiri.
- Where is Phiri most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Phiri is densest in Finland — about 1 in 136 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Phiri?
- In the United States, the national register counted 291 people named Phiri in 2010, about 1 in 1.1 million residents.
- How common is Phiri compared with other names?
- In Zambia, Phiri is the most common surname of 16,584 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Phiri?
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/phiriThe 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, “Phiri” — the most common surname in Zambia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.