Këëp
given name · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Këëp is a given name used for both men and women, written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Middle English kepen (“to keep, guard, look after, watch”), from Old English cēpan (“to seize, hold, observe”), from Proto-Germanic *kōpijaną (compare West Frisian kypje (“to look”)), from Proto-.
- NLNetherlands1 in 175K(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 309K
- USUnited States1 in 364K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 43 (measured from records)
- 1 in 175K (inferred from the name graph)
913 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Keep in US United States.
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)- Middle Englishkepen“to keep“to keep, guard, look after, watch”(measured from records)
- Old Englishcēpan“to seize“to seize, hold, observe”(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic*kōpijaną“to look”(measured from records)
- Proto-Indo-European*ǵab-“to look after”(measured from records)
From Middle English kepen (“to keep, guard, look after, watch”), from Old English cēpan (“to seize, hold, observe”), from Proto-Germanic *kōpijaną (compare West Frisian kypje (“to look”)), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵab-, *ǵāb- (“to look after”) (compare Lithuanian žẽbti (“to eat reluctantly”), Russian забо́та (zabóta, “care, worry”)).
Cited for this meaning 6
- A dictionary of surnames
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
- 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples)
Where in the world
(measured from records)Këëp counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 913 | 1 in 364K | 942 | Keep | 15 |
| BR Brazil | 100 | 1 in 2.1M | 100 | — | — |
| NL Netherlands | 99 | 1 in 175K | 99 | — | 2 |
| DK Denmark | 19 | 1 in 309K | 19 | — | — |
| PL Poland | 11 | 1 in 3.5M | 7 | — | — |
| SE Sweden | 6 | 1 in 1.7M | 6 | — | 2 |
913 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Këëp mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English kepen (“to keep, guard, look after, watch”), from Old English cēpan (“to seize, hold, observe”), from Proto-Germanic *kōpijaną (compare West Frisian kypje (“to look”)), from Proto-… Recorded by A dictionary of surnames and Dictionary of American Family Names and 4 other sources.
- Is Këëp a male or female name?
- Këëp is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Këëp have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 913 people named Këëp, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled keep.
- Where is Këëp most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Këëp is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 175 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Këëp?
- In the United States, the national register counted 913 people named Këëp in 2010, about 1 in 364 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Këëp?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/k%C3%AB%C3%ABpThe 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, “Këëp”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.