Rüf
surname · Latin script
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 1 country · latest register: BFS, 2024
Rüf is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- CHSwitzerland1 in 5.3K(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 7.4K
- USUnited States1 in 185K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 239 (measured from records)
- 1 in 5.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈11,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Ruf in US United States, DE Germany, CH Switzerland and 2 more.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Since 1670 existing in Durlach, Baden, and in Lörrach, Ba- den 1809.
Cited for this meaning 2
- A Frequency Dictionary of German
- The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
Attested across 22 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Rüf 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | #603 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.4K | listed | Ruf | 165 |
| US United States | — | 1,794 | 1 in 185K | 1.8K | Ruf | 239 |
| CH Switzerland | #301 | 1,576 | 1 in 5.3K | 1.6K | Ruf | 58 |
| GH Ghana | — | ≈620 est. | ≈1 in 47K | — | Ruf | 4 |
| FR France | — | ≈560 est. | ≈1 in 122K | 62 | — | 3 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈200 est. | ≈1 in 44K | — | Ruf | 43 |
| MD Moldova | — | ≈49 est. | ≈1 in 69K | 3 | — | 4 |
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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); e-services.md — living population register. 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).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Toni Rüfb. 1881ATAustrian merchant and dialect writer
- Josef Rüfb. 1882ATAustrian politician (1882-1934)
- Gigi Rüfb. 1981ATAustrian snowboarder
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
(measured from records)2 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 1 country.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 36 | #23,866 |
Reference works 1
- 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
- In which country does Rüf have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 11 thousand people named Rüf in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ruf.
- Where is Rüf most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Rüf is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 5.3 thousand people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Rüf?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,794 people named Rüf in 2010, about 1 in 185 thousand residents.
- How common is Rüf compared with other names?
- In Germany, Rüf is the 603rd most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Rüf?
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/r%C3%BCfThe 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, “Rüf” — the 603rd most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.