Chafe
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Heat excited by friction (kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations))
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 3 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/t͡ʃeɪf/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Chafe is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country.
- CACanada≈1 in 59K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 380Kfew records
- ESSpain1 in 834K
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.
- India (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 151 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 51K (inferred from the name graph)
≈5,300 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Malta, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
How to pronounce Chafe
- English:/t͡ʃeɪf/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Heat excited by friction.
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Chafe is found
(measured from records)Chafe 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 273K | — | Chafe | 16 |
| CA Canada | ≈700 est. | ≈1 in 59K | — | Chafe | 97 |
| US United States | 353 | 1 in 942K | 383 | Chafe | 151 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈250 est. | ≈1 in 934K | — | Chafe | 12 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 380K | — | Chafe | 40 |
| ES Spain | 60 | 1 in 834K | 60 | — | 8 |
| MT Malta | ≈11 est. | ≈1 in 51K | — | Chafe | 1 |
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 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal). 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)Chafe 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.
In enm, alternative form of chaufen
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Spanish, inflection of chafar:
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)- Wallace Chafeb. 1927USAmerican linguist (1927–2019)
- William Chafeb. 1942USAmerican historian
- Chris Chafeb. 1952USSwiss musicologist and scientist
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)11 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 3 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Chafe mean, and where does it come from?
- Heat excited by friction. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Chafe?
- In English /t͡ʃeɪf/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Chafe?
- Mondonomo estimates about 5.3 thousand people named Chafe in India, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled chafe. After it come Canada, United States, Nigeria and United Kingdom; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Chafe?
- In the United States, the national register counted 353 people named Chafe in 2010, about 1 in 942 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Chafe?
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/chafeThe 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, “Chafe”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.