Kai
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in German: wharf, quay
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kaɪ̯/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kai is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- FIFinland1 in 625(measured from records)
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 699
- DEGermany≈1 in 825
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 443 (measured from records)
- 1 in 625 (inferred from the name graph)
≈690,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
Hawaiian/Navajo/Indian: sea; willow tree; boy/girl
Sources 1
- Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
How Kai is read(measured from records)
Kai is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.
- German33%
wharf, quay
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English32%
Hawaiian/Navajo/Indian: sea; willow tree; boy/girl
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
- Chinese10.0%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kai in Chinese.
- Finnish7.7%
probably, I guess (that) (used to express a possibility or belief of what's going to happen)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Kai, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kai 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈690,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Kai | 66 |
| DE Germany | #175 | ≈97,000 est. | ≈1 in 825 | — | Kai | 271 |
| US United States | — | 53,204 | 1 in 6.3K | 46K | Kai | 443 |
| MY Malaysia | #204 | ≈32,000 est. | ≈1 in 1K | — | Kai | 99 |
| JP Japan | #603 | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.3K | — | Kai | 134 |
| HK Hong Kong | #196 | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 699 | — | Kai | 87 |
| FI Finland | #406 | 8,914 | 1 in 625 | 12K | Kai | 59 |
| NO Norway | #225 | 4,694 | 1 in 1.2K | 12K | Kai | 100 |
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; SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)
Kai is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
the original meaning is probably ‘shell’, but the name is written phonetically with two characters meaning ‘first class’ or ‘shell’, plus ‘beauty’ . Though the surname is found mostly in the island of Kyushu, some families could have connections with the ancient province of Kai (now Yamanashi prefecture) in the mountains of central Honshu.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
topographic name for someone living by a quayside, from Dutch kaai ‘quay’, German Kai (which was borrowed from the Dutch).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from the Danish personal name Kai, Kaj, Kay, which is of uncertain origin, most hkely from Frisian or Latin Caius.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- Liang Kaib. 1200CNChinese artist
- Kai Siegbahnb. 1918SESwedish physicist (1918–2007)
- Kai Hermannb. 1938DEGerman journalist and writer
- Kai Hansenb. 1963DEGerman guitarist and singer
- Kai Wiesingerb. 1966DEGerman actor
- Kai Pflaumeb. 1967DEGerman television presenter
- Kai Ivo Baulitzb. 1971DEGerman actor and author
- Kai Wegnerb. 1972DEGerman politician
- Kai Havertzb. 1999DEGerman association football player (born 1999)
- Kai Trumpb. 2007USAmerican social media personality and granddaughter of Donald Trump (born 2007)
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 118 sources across 58 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 46K | #858 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 12K | #357 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 12K | #176 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 8.9K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 7.3K | #858 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 4.7K | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 3.8K | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 234 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 192 | #1,811 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 132 | #6,421 |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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
- Is Kai a male or female name?
- Kai is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Kai?
- In the etymology graph, Kathy, Tina and Kay are forms of the same name in other languages.
- What does the name Kai mean?
- In German, wharf, quay
- Where does the name Kai come from?
- Hawaiian/Navajo/Indian: sea; willow tree; boy/girl Recorded by Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular….
- In which country does Kai have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 693 thousand people named Kai in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kai.
- Where is Kai most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kai is densest in Finland — about 1 in 625 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How do you pronounce Kai?
- A machine transcription gives /kaɪ̯/ (IPA) for German.
- How common is the name Kai?
- In the United States, the national register counted 53,204 people named Kai in 2020, about 1 in 6.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Kai compared with other names?
- In Germany, Kai is the 175th most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kai?
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/kaiThe 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, “Kai” — the 175th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.