About the name Rufus
Rufus belongs to the English & American tradition. Its roots are documented, even though its precise meaning is not recorded in the standard references — an honest gap we prefer to a confident guess.
In the United States, Rufus first appears in Social Security records in 1880. It climbed to its best-ever rank of #88 in 1880, and in 2024 26 babies received the name — 36,045 in total since 1880. Those are the official counts, not estimates.