Duff
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From Gaelic dubh ‘dark, black’, used as a personal name or nickname meaning ‘dark-haired/dark-complexioned’ or ‘dark temperament’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/dʌf/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Duff is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 9.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 9.8K
- USUnited States1 in 20K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 435 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 7.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈100,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From Gaelic dubh ‘dark, black’, used as a personal name or nickname meaning ‘dark-haired/dark-complexioned’ or ‘dark temperament’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Duff 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Duff | 13 |
| US United States | — | 16,536 | 1 in 20K | 17K | Duff | 435 |
| GB United Kingdom | #910 | ≈6,700 est. | ≈1 in 9.8K | listed | Duff | 220 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈2,900 est. | ≈1 in 73K | — | Duff | 21 |
| AU Australia | #839 | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 9.1K | — | Duff | 168 |
| IE Ireland | #612 | ≈750 est. | ≈1 in 7K | — | Duff | 87 |
| NZ New Zealand | #660 | ≈540 est. | ≈1 in 9.2K | — | Duff | 87 |
| GY Guyana | — | 57 | 1 in 13K | 57 | — | 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; the scottish-surnames-ross-1994 register; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Duff 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 English, Gaelic dubh, ‘black’; recorded as Dub in the 10th century. Duncan Duff recorded at Beauly c.1275 and in Kintyre in 1292.
as a nameScottish Surnames
In English, From Dubh ‘black’; of a man, ‘black-haired’.
as a nameIrish first names
In English, from the adjective duff; first attested Duncan Duff c1215 Black
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
Dubh is Gaelic for ‘black’. There was a tenth-century king recorded as Dub, but with no connection to the later Duffs. Such a descriptive name could have been taken independently by different families. Duncan Duff was recorded at Beauly around 1275, and another with the same name in Kintyre in 1292. See also MacDuff and MacPhee.
as a nameScottish Surnames
Scottish: from the Gaelic nickname dubh ‘black’, i.e. ‘dark-haired one’. In modern use it is in part a transferred use of the surname Duff, derived from the nickname.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first 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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Alexander Duffb. 1849GBScottish politician (1849-1912)
- Princess Alexandra, 2nd Duchess of Fifeb. 1891GBnot in their usual nameBritish princess; elder daughter of Louise, Princess Royal, and Alexander Duff, 1st Duke of Fife (1891-1959)
- Princess Maud, Countess of Southeskb. 1893GBnot in their usual nameBritish princess; youngest child of Alexander Duff, 1st Duke of Fife, and Louise, Princess Royal (1893–1945)
- Warren B. Duffb. 1904USAmerican film producer (1904–1973)
- Howard Duffb. 1913USAmerican actor (1913–1990)
- James Duffb. 1955USAmerican television director, producer and writer
- Anne-Marie Duffb. 1970GBBritish actress
- Damien Duffb. 1979IEIrish footballer and manager (born 1979)
- Haylie Duffb. 1985USAmerican actress and singer
- Hilary Duffb. 1987USAmerican actress and singer (born 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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 37 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 17K | #2,202 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 16K | #2,198 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 16K | #2,058 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 57 | #568 |
| GB United Kingdom | Scottish Surnames (Ross, 1994) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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 Duff mean, and where does it come from?
- From Gaelic dubh ‘dark, black’, used as a personal name or nickname meaning ‘dark-haired/dark-complexioned’ or ‘dark temperament’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Duff?
- A machine transcription gives /dʌf/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Duff have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 103 thousand people named Duff in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled duff.
- How common is the name Duff?
- In the United States, the national register counted 16,536 people named Duff in 2010, about 1 in 20 thousand residents.
- How common is Duff compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Duff is the 612th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Duff?
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/duffThe 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, “Duff” — the 612th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.