Kĕy

surname · Latin script

Kĕy is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Main GB Location (1881): widespread: esp. London;. see Kay .

rarermore common
  • SESweden1 in 67K(measured from records)
  • CRCosta Rica1 in 164K
  • USUnited States1 in 391K

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)

850 people, 2020

Sources
102 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 67K (inferred from the name graph)

Sweden

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

7 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Key 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)

Main GB Location (1881): widespread: esp. London;. see Kay .

Sources 6

  • DUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • TDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)
  • Wiktionary

Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Kĕy 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.

Where Kĕy is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States8501 in 391K34KKey64
SE Sweden1521 in 67K152—1
BR Brazil801 in 2.6M80——
NL Netherlands331 in 524K28—3
CR Costa Rica311 in 164K31——
FI Finland51 in 1.1M36—1

850 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Kĕy under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Kĕy mean, and where does it come from?
Main GB Location (1881): widespread: esp. London;. see Kay . Recorded by DUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen and Dictionary of American Family Names and 4 other sources.
In which country does Kĕy have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 850 people named Kĕy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled key.
Where is Kĕy most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kĕy is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 67 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Kĕy?
In the United States, the national register counted 850 people named Kĕy in 2020, about 1 in 391 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Kĕy?

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/k%C4%95y

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, “Kĕy”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Kĕy parses inside a full name →