Ulf
A Germanic name meaning "wolf", carried in Scandinavian tradition. In Poland it's down to about 80 men and no boys get it now, so most Poles have never met an Ulf.
Ulf Pronunciation
Ulf is pronounced OOLF (/ulf/).
What Ulf means
Where Ulf comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Ulf comes from Old Norse Úlfr, a Germanic name with a blunt meaning: wolf. Polish renders it wilk. Among the Norse the wolf was a beast worth naming a son for, and Úlfr turns up across medieval Scandinavia on runestones and in sagas.
The name kept no diminutive and no feminine twin. It stayed short. Ulf is one syllable that does its whole job, and that plainness is part of why it held on where longer names frayed.
Old Norse bred a whole family of wolf-names from this root, from Úlfarr to the many endings in -ulfr. Ulf itself is the root standing alone, with nothing added.
On a Polish class register today Ulf reads as plainly Scandinavian, a Nordic marker among the Katarzynas and the Piotrs. A child who carries it carries the plain sense of the word: wolf, wilk.
How many people are named Ulf
1 in 260319 men in Poland is named Ulf. 82 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3924 among male names.
Ulf as a middle name
Ulf is a first name for 82 men in Poland and a middle name for another 7, a 92/8 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 4068th, between Ugur (7) and Umair (7).
-
#4066 Ugo7
-
#4067 Ugur7
-
#4068 Ulf7
-
#4069 Umair7
-
#4070 Un7