Explore the Family Name Kiff

The meaning of Kiff

1. German: topographic name from Westphalian dialect Kiff ‘outhouse, tied cottage, or shack’. 2. English (Hertfordshire and Middlesex): perhaps a variant of Kift, which may be from an unrecorded Middle English kift, identical with 19th-century dialectal kift ‘clumsy, awkward’, perhaps for a left-handed person.

Dictionary of American Family Names, 2nd edition, © Oxford University Press, 2022.

How common is the last name Kiff in the United States?

The surname Kiff, according to the Decennial U.S. Census data, has seen a slight decrease in popularity between 2000 and 2010. In 2000, Kiff was ranked as the 50,801st most common surname in the United States with 386 individuals bearing this name. Ten years later, it had dropped to the 54,055th position, despite only a marginal decrease in the count of people with this surname, from 386 to 382. The proportion of people named Kiff per 100,000 also decreased by 7.14% over this period.

	2000	2010	Change
Rank	#50,801	#54,055	-6.41%
Count	386	382	-1.04%
Proportion per 100k	0.14	0.13	-7.14%

Race and Ethnicity of people with the last name Kiff

In terms of ethnic identity, the Decennial U.S. Census data shows that the majority of individuals with the Kiff surname identified as White in both 2000 and 2010. This group accounted for 93.78% in 2000 and experienced a small decrease to 91.88% in 2010. There was also a small percentage who identified as Black, 4.40% in 2000 and 4.19% in 2010. The decade saw the emergence of those identifying as Hispanic within the Kiff surname bearers, at 2.36% in 2010. However, there were no reported instances of persons with this surname identifying as Asian/Pacific Islander or American Indian and Alaskan Native in either year.

	2000	2010	Change
White	93.78%	91.88%	-2.03%
Black	4.4%	4.19%	-4.77%
Hispanic	0%	2.36%	0%
Asian/Pacific Islander	0%	0%	0%
Two or More Races	0%	0%	0%
American Indian and Alaskan Native	0%	0%	0%