Entry № 4438 · Yoruba origin

Ife Ife — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ EE-feh /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Yoruba
Meaning
"Love"
Syllables
1
First recorded
Ancient (Yoruba tradition)

A name that means "love".

Ife (Ìfẹ́) is the Yoruba word for love. It is also the name of one of the oldest cities in Africa — Ile-Ife in southwestern Nigeria, considered by the Yoruba to be the cradle of humanity in Yoruba mythology, the place where the gods first descended to create the world.

As a given name, Ife is common in Yoruba families and the African diaspora. It often appears as part of compound names — Ifeoma ("good love"), Ifeyinwa ("there is nothing like love"). Two soft syllables, three letters, and a meaning that is also a holy place.

Love — a Yoruba name.

The name in its native script.

Ife
Transliteration
Ife
Pronunciation
/ ˈiː.fɛ /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Ife stands.

Ife does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.

Ifes before her.

Real people
Ife Adetona
Nigerian-American rapper, professionally known as Tems.
born 1995
In fiction

Names connected to Ife.

The number behind Ife.

2

The Peacemaker

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Ife reduce to 2, The Peacemaker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.