Raphael

At the 2020 census, 4,585 Americans bore the surname Raphael — 7,055th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 65,200.

By the numbers

People: 4,585
Rank: 7,055th
How common: 1 in 65,200
Per 100,000: 1.5

Where the name comes from

Origin a patronymic

Latin Raphael. From Koine Greek Ῥᾱφᾱήλ, from Hebrew רָפָאֵל.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Raphael described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 45.1%
Black, not Hispanic 37.3%
Hispanic or Latino 8.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.8%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 3.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 2.0%

Notable people called Raphael

Raphael (1483–1520)Italian painter and architect
Yuval Raphael (born 2000)Israeli singer
Raphael (born 1943)Spanish recording artist; singer and actor
June Diane Raphael (born 1980)American actress, comedian, and screenwriter
Raphaël (born 1975)French singer
Günter Raphael (1903–1960)German composer
Frederic Raphael (born 1931)American-British writer

People named Raphael with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Raphael

Also a first name

Raphael has been given to 24,581 American babies as a first name since 1882, peaking in 2025. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.