Serf
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A partially free peasant of a low hereditary class, attached like a slave to the land owned by a feudal lord and required to perform labour, enjoying minimal legal or customary rights
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 4 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
/sɜːf/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Serf is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 410Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- FRFrance≈1 in 1M
- USUnited States≈1 in 3.4Mfew records
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
- 70 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 412K (inferred from the name graph)
≈200 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Cerf means in French deer, existing in Bretten, in the Pala- tinate, in the Middle Rhine district, and since 1827 in Murg and Pfinzkreis.
Cited for this meaning 1
- The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
How Serf is read
(measured from records)Serf is one spelling over 3 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.
- English52%
A partially free peasant of a low hereditary class, attached like a slave to the land owned by a feudal lord and required to perform labour, enjoying minimal legal or customary rights.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French20%
a serf (semifree peasant obliged to remain on the lord's land and to perform extensive chores for him)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German17%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Serf in German.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)Serf 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 | ≈200 est. | ≈1 in 412K | — | Serf | 38 |
| US United States | ≈100 est. | ≈1 in 3.4M | listed | Serf | 70 |
| FR France | ≈67 est. | ≈1 in 1M | 4 | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈7 est. | ≈1 in 9.5M | 5 | Serf | 7 |
| CA Canada | ≈7 est. | ≈1 in 5.7M | — | Serf | 8 |
| PL Poland | 2 | 1 in 19M | 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: the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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)Serf is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Cerf means in French deer, existing in Bretten, in the Pala- tinate, in the Middle Rhine district, and since 1827 in Murg and Pfinzkreis.
as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
In frm, serf (semifree peasant)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Kurdish, expense, cost
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In crs, deer
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)- Paul Serfb. 1867DEDr. phil. Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn 1890
- Barbarab. 1930FRnot in their usual nameFrench recording artist; singer-songwriter (1930–1997)
- Egyed Serfb. 1955HUHungarian actor (1955–)
- Marianne SerfFRFrench bridge player
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)6 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 18 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 15 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 15 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 11 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 11 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 10 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1891 | 10 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 9 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 7 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 5 | #230,412 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 5 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 4 | — |
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
- Where does the name Serf come from?
- Cerf means in French deer, existing in Bretten, in the Pala- tinate, in the Middle Rhine district, and since 1827 in Murg and Pfinzkreis. Recorded by The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History.
- What are other forms of the name Serf?
- In the etymology graph, Servo and Servile are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Serf?
- In English /sɜːf/ (Wiktionary).
- What does the name Serf mean?
- In English, A partially free peasant of a low hereditary class, attached like a slave to the land owned by a feudal lord and required to perform labour, enjoying minimal legal or customary rights.
- In which country does Serf have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 203 people named Serf in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled serf.
- How common is the name Serf?
- In Poland, the national register counted 2 people named Serf in 2026, about 1 in 19 million residents.
What do you want to know about Serf?
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/serfThe 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, “Serf”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.