Given name & surname
Lateef
“one who is kind and gentle”
Lateef is a variant of Latif. One Arabic interpretation is “one who is kind and gentle.”
Meaning & origin
What it means
Lateef is a variant of Latif. One Arabic interpretation is “one who is kind and gentle.”
Explained through its name family
Where it comes from
Lateef is a variant of Latif. An origin associated with Latif is Arabic.
Explained through its name family
How it developed
From Arabic لَطِيف (“gentle, kind”); its root is Arabic ل ط ف.
Adapted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The story
Published U.S. birth records include this spelling as early as 1967. This is the earliest published observation available here, rather than a date for the name’s origin.
From dated birth records
Lateef through the years
- Babies since 1880
- 891
- 891 boys · 0 girls
- Most popular year
- 1977
- 47 babies
- 2025
- 0
- Outside the ranked list
- 2021–25 vs 2016–20
- −84%
- Cooling
By the numbers
The most recent published U.S. birth count for boys is 6 in 2022. Later missing counts do not mean the name went unused. Its largest published annual count for boys was 47 in 1977. Published U.S. population figures for this spelling include 954 as a first name in 2020; 740 as a surname in 2020.
From Social Security birth records and U.S. Census name counts for this exact spelling. Other spellings are counted separately.
Inner ring: spellings · middle: nicknames and forms · outer: across languages.
Nicknames & forms 2
Diminutives, pet forms, short forms and variants used alongside the name.
Spellings & scripts 1
The same name written differently, including transliterations into other scripts.
Across languages 2
Equivalents and cognates in other languages, plus older forms it grew from.
Similar names
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