Rive
loc · Latin script
Meaning, in French: the bank of a river or the shore of a lake, OF rive (L ripa). Vars.: Rives; Larive, Delarive. Dims.: Fr.: Rivet, Riveau, Rivelon. It.: Rivetti. Cat.: Ribo. Robatham see Rowbottom Riveles see Rifkin
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Rive is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country.
- FRFrance≈1 in 116K(inferred from the name graph)
- FIFinland1 in 127K
- NONorway1 in 210K
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.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 46 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 116K (inferred from the name graph)
≈580 people, est.
Highest-authority source
France, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Rivé in AR Argentina.
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)
the bank of a river or the shore of a lake, OF rive (L ripa). Vars.: Rives; Larive, Delarive. Dims.: Fr.: Rivet, Riveau, Rivelon. It.: Rivetti. Cat.: Ribo. Robatham see Rowbottom Riveles see Rifkin
Sources 1
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
How Rive is read(measured from records)
Rive is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- French29%
the bank of a river or the shore of a lake, OF rive (L ripa). Vars.: Rives; Larive, Delarive. Dims.: Fr.: Rivet, Riveau, Rivelon. It.: Rivetti. Cat.: Ribo. Robatham see Rowbottom Riveles see Rifkin
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
bank (of a river)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English12%
To tear apart by force; to rend; to split; to cleave.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Rive 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | ≈580 est. | ≈1 in 116K | 63 | Rive | 1 |
| US United States | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 2.2M | listed | — | 46 |
| AR Argentina | 152 | 1 in 299K | 152 | Rivé | 26 |
| BR Brazil | 76 | 1 in 2.8M | 76 | Rive | 24 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈68 est. | ≈1 in 965K | 89 | — | 4 |
| FI Finland | 44 | 1 in 127K | 44 | — | — |
| NL Netherlands | 33 | 1 in 524K | 49 | — | 2 |
| NO Norway | 26 | 1 in 210K | 26 | — | 2 |
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: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); the us-wru-surnames-voterfile 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Rive 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 Norwegian Nynorsk, a rake (garden and agricultural tool)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latin, vocative singular of rīvus
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Haitian Creole, to arrive, to get to
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)
- Jean-Joseph Riveb. 1730FRFrench librarian
- Roberto Riveb. 1817FRBritish photographer (1817-1868)
- Francisque Riveb. 1837FRFrench politician
- Kenneth Riveb. 1918GBBritish actor (1918-2002)
- Lucas Riveb. 1962NLDutch chef (1962-2019)
- Joey Riveb. 1963USAmerican tennis player
- Lyndon Riveb. 1977ZASouth African businessman (born 1977)
- Almeda Riveb. 1986CACanada based motorcyclist
- Dmitriy Riveb. 1995KZcyclist
- Peter Riveb. 2000USAmerican chief technology officer
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)
Attested in 26 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 152 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 116 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 112 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 108 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 107 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 93 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 89 | #35,604 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 88 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 77 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 76 | #77,671 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 73 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 64 | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Rive mean, and where does it come from?
- the bank of a river or the shore of a lake, OF rive (L ripa). Vars.: Rives; Larive, Delarive. Dims.: Fr.: Rivet, Riveau, Rivelon. It.: Rivetti. Cat.: Ribo. Robatham see Rowbottom Riveles see Rifkin Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
- In which country does Rive have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 583 people named Rive in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rive.
- How common is the name Rive?
- In Argentina, the national register counted 152 people named Rive, about 1 in 299 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Rive?
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/riveThe 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, “Rive”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.