Efe
A Turkish name given only to boys in Poland, where barely a hundred men carry it. Most Poles have never met one. Its root sense is "brave".
Efe Pronunciation
Efe is pronounced E-fe (/ˈɛfɛ/).
What Efe means
Where Efe comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Efe comes from Turkish, where it means older brother and, by extension, a brave one. In the Aegean provinces of western Anatolia, an efe led the zeybek, the armed village men who acted as protectors and local folk heroes. The word worked as a title, marking a man others deferred to.
The short meaning given here, brave, sits close to the source. An efe earned that respect by standing in front of the others. Courage came bundled with seniority, the older brother who answers for the younger ones.
Today the name travels light. It carries no diminutives and no variants. On a Polish class register it reads as three plain letters, easy for a teacher to call out. Efe still means what it meant in the hills above İzmir: older brother, brave.
How many people are named Efe
1 in 209276 men in Poland is named Efe. 102 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3398 among male names.
Efe's popularity over time
Fewer than 2 boys were given the name in 2025. It has been climbing since 2025.
Efe as a middle name
Efe is a first name for 102 men in Poland and a middle name for another 121, a 46/54 split, almost evenly. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 636th, between Yosef (122) and Gordon (121).
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#634 Polikarp122
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#635 Yosef122
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#636 Efe121
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#637 Gordon121
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#638 Alois119