Hafiz
An Arabic name meaning "guardian, preserver". Only about 50 men in Poland carry it, and no boys have been given it in years: most Poles have never met one.
Hafiz Pronunciation
Hafiz is pronounced KHAH-fees (/ˈxafis/).
What Hafiz means
Where Hafiz comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Hafiz comes from the Arabic root ḥ-f-ẓ, meaning to guard and to preserve. From that root grows the sense carried into Polish as opiekun, strażnik: guardian, preserver. In Muslim tradition the word became a title. A person who commits the whole Quran to memory earns the name Hafiz, one who keeps the text intact.
The most famous bearer sharpened that meaning. The Persian poet of Shiraz, born Shams al-Din Muhammad in the fourteenth century, took Hafez as his pen name because he knew the Quran by heart. His collected Divan still sits on shelves in Iranian homes. Al-Hafiz also stands among the ninety-nine names of God, the Preserver.
For a Polish child the name reads as plainly foreign. A teacher checking the class register might slow on it. The meaning stays legible though: strażnik, one who watches and keeps.
How many people are named Hafiz
1 in 426924 men in Poland is named Hafiz. 50 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #5339 among male names.
Hafiz as a middle name
Hafiz is a first name for 50 men in Poland and a middle name for another 4, a 93/7 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 5429th, between Hafeez (4) and Haidar (4).
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#5427 Haci4
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#5428 Hafeez4
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#5429 Hafiz4
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#5430 Haidar4
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#5431 Hainz4