Name Awesome

Ife

Girls' name

Love

Ife has been given to 202 babies in the U.S. since 1970. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1977, with 16 recorded.

Babies named Ife, 2018

1 in 352,000

Ife over time, 1880–2025

Girls
0510152018801900192019401960198020002020

Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Ife: meaning, origin, and history

Love

Deeper origin not confirmed in the cited records

What Ife means

Ife means “love”.

Documented naming usage and pronunciation

Ife is used in Yoruba.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 202 girls were recorded with the name Ife between 1970 and 2018. Its highest annual count was 16 in 1977; its best national rank was #4,290 in 1977.

Sources & methodologyReferences, data & attribution

Meaning, origin, and language notes draw on the references below.

American popularity figures use published Social Security Administration records for this exact spelling. Counts below five for a name, sex, and year are omitted.

How common is Ife?

Ife had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2018, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 2018
1 in 352,000
10 of 3,516,853 births
Among girls only
1 in 170,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 2018
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
243,771 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Ife sits on the popularity scale

Rarest published (5 a year)#1 — Olivia (13,544)

Chance at least one other child shares the name

If the other children were drawn at random from the 2018 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.

Class of 20Under 1%
Class of 30Under 1%
Grade of 100Under 1%
School of 500Under 1%

Put another way: gather 243,771 children born in 2018 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Ife. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Ifes were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Ife was born before 1981 — so the typical Ife is around 44 today.

Median birth year
1981
About 44 years old
Biggest decade
1970s
40.6% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
33.2%
Spread across generations
Recorded since 1950
202
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1970s — 40.6% of all recorded uses (82).

Is Ife rising or falling?

Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.

Rank vs 1 year ago
—
Not ranked then
Rank vs 5 years ago
New entry
Not ranked then
Rank vs 10 years ago
—
Not ranked then
Births vs 10 years ago
—
Not published both years
Share of its own peak
0%
Peak was 1977 (16)
Years since peak
48
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Volatile
73.4% average annual change
Best rank ever
#4,290
1977

Where Ife is used

Across 1910–2025, Ife was most concentrated in New York — about 1 in — girls, against 1 in 694,800 across all states with data.

00 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1New York1 in —

Shading is the share of that state's recorded girls given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Ife has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Ife around the world

Where Ife ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.

  • England & Wales
    2010–2019
    #4,686
    in 2019

Popularity data from Office for National Statistics. ONS data under Open Government Licence v3.0.

Ife by the numbers

The raw record for each sex the name is used for.

As a girl's name

Rank in 2025
Unranked
Trend vs 5 yrs ago
—
Best rank ever
#4,290
1977
Peak year
1977
16 that year
First recorded
1970
Last recorded
2018
All-time count
202
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Ife

Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.

IfeomaIfeoluwaAoifeLifeJennifeIfetayoAifeIfechukwuIfeyinwaBoluwatife

Sibling names for Ife

Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.

Explore around Ife

Top names of 1977, Ife's peak yearThe 1970s in fullOther names that peaked in 1977Girls' names starting with I