Kishi

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in Japanese: ‘shore’; topographic name found throughout Japan. Written two ways; the older, phonetic rendering is listed in the Shinsen shojiroku

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/ˈkiʃi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Kishi is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in Brazil.

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Kishi's inclusion in the Levitical genealogies highlights the importance of lineage and inherited responsibility in the religious life of ancient Israel. His primary significance is as the father of Ethan, whose musical service was an integral part of temple worship, underscoring that even seemingly minor figures play a role in the continuity of sacred traditions.

Sources 1

  • Biblical Names Compiled Database

Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.

How Kishi is read(measured from records)

Kishi is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • Japanese59%

    ‘shore’; topographic name found throughout Japan. Written two ways; the older, phonetic rendering is listed in the Shinsen shojiroku.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

    Rōmaji transcription of きし

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • English21%

    Nobusuke, Japanese statesman

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

    capital, Moldova

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

    Kishinev [Chi§inau]

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • Portuguese9.2%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Kishi in Portuguese.

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Kishi counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Where Kishi is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spelling
BR Brazil—482—
US United States—480—
ES Spain—10—
BE Belgium—4—
CZ Czechia—3—

Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); MVČR — living population register 2017. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Kishi is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • Kishi's inclusion in the Levitical genealogies highlights the importance of lineage and inherited responsibility in the religious life of ancient Israel. His primary significance is as the father of Ethan, whose musical service was an integral part of temple worship, underscoring that even seemingly minor figures play a role in the continuity of sacred traditions.

    as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

1850190019502000Nobusuke Kishi, b. 1896Asako Kishi, b. 1923Yōko Kishi, b. 1928Keiko Kishi, b. 1932Yoshito Kishi, b. 1937Nobuo Kishi, b. 1959Hiroyuki Kishi, b. 1962Takayuki Kishi, b. 1984Aino Kishi, b. 1988Seiji Kishi, b. 2000

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

How to address them(machine-generated)

FormalKishi様Dear Kishi-san, (English)
Informalこんにちは、KishiさんHi Kishi, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 18 sources across 9 countries.

Reference works 6

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the name Kishi come from?
Kishi's inclusion in the Levitical genealogies highlights the importance of lineage and inherited responsibility in the religious life of ancient Israel. Recorded by Biblical Names Compiled Database.
How do you pronounce Kishi?
A machine transcription gives /ˈkiʃi/ (IPA) for Japanese.
What does the name Kishi mean?
In Japanese, ‘shore’; topographic name found throughout Japan. Written two ways; the older, phonetic rendering is listed in the Shinsen shojiroku.
In which country does Kishi have the most bearers?
Kishi is most frequently recorded in Brazil.

What do you want to know about Kishi?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kishi

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Kishi”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Kishi parses inside a full name →