girls:
61 births since 1998
#5655 (1st percentile)
boys:
103 births since 2011
#4483 (2nd percentile)
overall:
164 births since 1998
#7575 (2nd percentile)
The name Rafa is the #7,575 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 164 recorded births since 1998. This represents the 2.1% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 2.1% of all names). For boys, it ranks #4,483 (2.2% percentile) for all time with 103 births since 2011. For girls, it ranks #5,655 (1.0% percentile) for all time with 61 births since 1998.
Rafa first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1998 (1998 for girls and 2011 for boys). Birth data for Rafa is available in 15 out of the 26 years between 1998 and 2023 (10 years for boys and 9 years for girls). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.
The name Rafa has been given to both genders, with a slight preference for boys (62.8% of all recorded births). In 2023, 73.1% of babies named Rafa were boys. Interestingly, until around 2012, the name was more popular for girls (76.5% girls from 1998 to 2011), but since then it has been more commonly used for boys (73.1% boys from 2012 to 2023).
For boys, Rafa reached its peak popularity in 2023, achieving the 1.5% percentile (ranked #897) with 10 births per million. The name was most common in 2023, with 10 births per million (ranked 1.5% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2017, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Rafa is at or near its peak popularity for boys, ranked #897 (1.5% percentile) with 10 births per million.
For girls, Rafa reached its peak popularity in 2021, achieving the 0.5% percentile (ranked #931) with 6 births per million. The name was most common in 2021, with 6 births per million (ranked 0.5% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2021, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Rafa ranks #945 for girls (0.2% percentile) with 4 births per million, which is 71.7% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Rafa".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Rafa.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Rafa", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Rafa.
Our model has identified 3 different pronunciations for the name Rafa. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 70.6% confident that Rafa is pronounced as RAH-fuh, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is RA-fuh, at 17.6% confidence, with 2 syllables.
If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Rafa? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Rafa. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Rafa, please vote using the thumbs up button.
Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.
For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.
The raw pronunciations shown (like R AA1 F AH0) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.
Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.
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