The name Raphael comes from the Hebrew Rafa’el meaning ‘God heals’, ‘rafa’ meaning ‘to heal’ and ‘el’ meaning ‘God’. In Hebrew tradition Raphael is the name of an archangel.
Raphael is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
The name Raphael isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Raphael ranks 512. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 3 were named Raphael. In the entire USA, approximately 16,611 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Raphael. That is 0.00 % of all living Americans.
The name Raphael comes from the Hebrew Rafa’el meaning ‘God heals’, ‘rafa’ meaning ‘to heal’ and ‘el’ meaning ‘God’. In Hebrew tradition Raphael is the name of an archangel.
In English-speaking... countries, Raphael was never really common as a given name, in other European countries it was more common.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter R is quite common as an initial letter for boys’ names. To be precise, 5.2% of all boys' names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of boys' names, by the way, are J, A and D.
With seven letters, the name Raphael has a typical length for first names in the US. In fact, 26% of all common first names consist of exactly seven letters. 52% of all first names are shorter, while 22% have eight letters or more. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
Therefore: As 5.2% of all boys' names start with R, this initial letter occurs much more often than all 26 letters on average. And maybe interesting to know: of all the names that begin with an R, Robert is the most common.
If your name is Raphael and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Raphael, you can simply say:
Rocket
Apple
Pig
Hat
Apple
Elephant
Lion
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Raphael
Raphael
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
R
A
P
H
A
E
L
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
R
A
P
H
A
E
L
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Raphael sounds like this:
