Jef
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Initialism of Joint Expeditionary Force
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 17 countries · latest register: IBGE, 2022
/dʒɛf/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jef is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 42K(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 133K
- USUnited States1 in 593K
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)
- Record sources
- 15 (measured from records)
- 1 in 42K (inferred from the name graph)
561 people, 2020
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Initialism of Joint Expeditionary Force.
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 29 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Jef 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 561 | 1 in 593K | 550 | Jef | 11 |
| NL Netherlands | 411 | 1 in 42K | 399 | — | 2 |
| BR Brazil | 51 | 1 in 4.2M | 55 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | 44 | 1 in 133K | 44 | — | — |
| SE Sweden | 8 | 1 in 1.3M | 8 | — | — |
| CR Costa Rica | 2 | 1 in 2.5M | 2 | — | — |
561 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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)- Jef Lambeauxb. 1852BEBelgian sculptor (1852-1908)
- Jef van de Wieleb. 1903BEBelgian Nazi collaborator (1903–1979)
- Jef Demuysereb. 1907BEBelgian road bicycle racer
- Jef Scherensb. 1909BEtrack cyclist (1909–1986)
- Jef Nysb. 1927BEcomic creator (1927-2009)
- Jef Geeraertsb. 1930BEBelgian novelist (1930–2015)
- Jef Raskinb. 1943USAmerican computer interface expert (1943-2005)
- Jef Murrayb. 1960GBBritish artist (1960–2015)
- Jef Aertsb. 1972BEFlemisch poet and writer
- Jef Neveb. 1977BEBelgian pianist
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)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)26 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 17 countries.
Reference works 3
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Jef mean, and where does it come from?
- Initialism of Joint Expeditionary Force. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Jef?
- In the etymology graph, Jose, Joseph and Joe are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Jef?
- A machine transcription gives /dʒɛf/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Jef a male or female name?
- Jef is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: United States (Census Bureau, 2020) and Netherlands (Meertens NVB).
- In which country does Jef have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 561 people named Jef, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jef.
- Where is Jef most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Jef is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 42 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Jef?
- In the United States, the national register counted 561 people named Jef in 2020, about 1 in 593 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Jef?
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/jefThe 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, “Jef”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.