Kam
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Crooked, awry
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkæm/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kam is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Hong Kong it is the 93rd most common given name.
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 351(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 2.1K
- CACanada≈1 in 20K
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)
- Sources
- 361 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 351 (inferred from the name graph)
≈110,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Hong Kong, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Reduced form of Dutch van der Kam, from Middle Dutch kamme ‘brewery’, hence a topographic name for someone who lived by a brewery or a metonymic occupational name for someone who worked in one.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
How Kam is read(measured from records)
Kam 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.
- English53%
Crooked, awry.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Chinese13%
cringe; weird; awkward
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Malay11%
a surname from Hakka
as a wordrecorded as Indonesiankaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Hindi5.4%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kam in Hindi.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Kam 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 | — | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Kam | 35 |
| HK Hong Kong | #93 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 351 | — | Kam | 93 |
| MY Malaysia | #591 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | — | Kam | 80 |
| US United States | — | 5,081 | 1 in 65K | 3.8K | Kam | 361 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 20K | 6 | Kam | 141 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 19K | 262 | — | — |
| SG Singapore | #973 | ≈640 est. | ≈1 in 9.7K | — | Kam | 81 |
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 2020; the ca-statcan-baby-names register; nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies. 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)
Kam 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.
Reduced form of Dutch van der Kam, from Middle Dutch kamme ‘brewery’, hence a topographic name for someone who lived by a brewery or a metonymic occupational name for someone who worked in one.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from Dutch and Yiddish kam ‘comb’, hence a metonymic occupational name either for a comb maker or for a wool comber or fuller.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Reduced form of Dutch van Kam, a habitational name for someone from Chaam (formerly Kam) near Breda.
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)
- Pan Qinb. 1424not in their usual nameMing dynasty politician
- Ke Qinb. 1619not in their usual nameQing dynasty person CBDB=84750
- Hoàng Cầmb. 1920VNnot in their usual nameColonel-general of People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), Commander of PAVN forces in the Operation Attleboro 1966
- Hoàng Cầmb. 1922VNnot in their usual nameVietnamese poet, writer and playwright (1922–2010)
- Xu Zhiqinb. 1941CNnot in their usual nameChinese structural geologist
- Tsai Chinb. 1957TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese singer
- Kym Ngb. 1967SGnot in their usual nameSingaporean actress and television presenter
- Liang Qinb. 1972CNnot in their usual nameChinese fencer
- Ning Qinb. 1992CNnot in their usual nameChinese freestyle skier
- Yu Qinnot in their usual nameQing dynasty painter
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 52 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 3K | #3,866 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.1K | #3,866 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 33 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2020 | 6 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1982 | 5 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 1991 | 5 | — |
Reference works 8
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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
- How do you pronounce Kam?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkæm/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Kam mean?
- In English, Crooked, awry.
- Where does the name Kam come from?
- Reduced form of Dutch van der Kam, from Middle Dutch kamme ‘brewery’, hence a topographic name for someone who lived by a brewery or a metonymic occupational name for someone who worked in one. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- Is Kam a male or female name?
- Kam 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.
- What are other forms of the name Kam?
- In the etymology graph, Cam is a form of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Kameron.
- In which country does Kam have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 113 thousand people named Kam in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kam.
- How common is the name Kam?
- In the United States, the national register counted 5,081 people named Kam in 2020, about 1 in 65 thousand residents.
- How common is Kam compared with other names?
- In Hong Kong, Kam is the 93rd most common given name of 23,276 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kam?
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/kamThe 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, “Kam” — the 93rd most common given name in Hong Kong. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.