Zafar
An Arabic name meaning "victory". Fewer than 150 men in Poland carry it, and lately no boys have been given it: most Poles will never meet a Zafar.
Zafar Pronunciation
Zafar is pronounced ZAH-fahr (/ˈzafar/).
What Zafar means
Where Zafar comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Zafar reached Polish through Arabic, where the word ẓafar means victory and triumph. The sound is short and firm. In its home language it names an outcome, the point where a struggle ends and one side prevails.
The most famous bearer wrote under it. Bahadur Shah II, the last Mughal emperor, signed his Urdu poems as Zafar, the pen name he chose for himself. He lost his throne to the British in 1857 and died in exile in Rangoon. So the name that means victory sat above verses about defeat, and that contrast belongs to its record.
In a Polish class register today, Zafar usually marks a family with roots outside Poland, often Arab or South Asian. There is no name-day for it in the Church calendar. No Polish diminutive has settled onto it either. What holds steady is the plain sense brought over from Arabic: victory.
How many people are named Zafar
1 in 145212 men in Poland is named Zafar. 147 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2680 among male names.
Zafar as a middle name
Zafar is a first name for 147 men in Poland and a middle name for another 11, a 93/7 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 3036th, between Yvon (11) and Zeki (11).
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#3034 Yonatan11
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#3035 Yvon11
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#3036 Zafar11
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#3037 Zeki11
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#3038 Árpád11