Used as a diminutive of Raphael or as an Arabic-derived name, often carrying meanings like God has healed or exalted.
Raffi is the Armenian diminutive of Raphael, the Hebrew name meaning 'God has healed,' composed of 'rapha' (to heal) and 'el' (God). Raphael is one of the archangels named in Jewish and Christian scripture, the heavenly physician sent to heal Tobit's blindness in the deuterocanonical Book of Tobit, and one of only three angels named in the Bible. In Armenian culture, the name Raffi acquired independent literary stature through the nineteenth-century novelist Hakob Melik Hakobian, who wrote under the pen name Raffi and became one of the defining voices of Armenian national awakening, his historical novels stirring a generation before the catastrophes of the twentieth century.
The name leapt into a completely different cultural register in the 1970s and 1980s through Raffi Cavoukian, the Armenian-Canadian children's musician known simply as Raffi. His gentle, ecologically minded songs — 'Baby Beluga,' 'Bananaphone,' 'Down by the Bay' — became the soundtrack of an entire North American generation's early childhood, and his name became synonymous with warmth, whimsy, and the earnest celebration of wonder. For millions, Raffi is the first musician they ever loved.
Today the name spans these registers gracefully: the healing archangel, the Armenian literary patriot, the beloved children's troubadour. It is used among Armenian diaspora families as an affectionate given name in its own right, and has spread well beyond that community, carried by the goodwill Raffi Cavoukian built across forty years of singing to small children.