Kanye
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kəɲi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kanye is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Evidently from Igbo Kanye, although inspiration from other African languages may have contributed.
- USUnited States1 in 284K(measured from records)
- GYGuyana1 in 125K
- ISIceland1 in 351K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 129 (measured from records)
- 1 in 125K (inferred from the name graph)
1,173 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Evidently from Igbo Kanye, although inspiration from other African languages may have contributed. The verb is a reference to Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift’s speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
Sources 1
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kanye 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 | 1,173 | 1 in 284K | 1.1K | Kanye | 129 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 1.5M | — | Kanye | 10 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈99 est. | ≈1 in 569K | — | Kanye | 9 |
| NL Netherlands | 21 | 1 in 823K | 21 | — | 2 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈15 est. | ≈1 in 4.3M | listed | Kanye | 30 |
| GY Guyana | 6 | 1 in 125K | 6 | Kanye | 1 |
| JM Jamaica | ≈5 est. | ≈1 in 582K | — | Kanye | 3 |
| IS Iceland | 1 | 1 in 351K | 1 | — | — |
1,173 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; the gb-nisra-baby-names-ni register; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)
Kanye is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Xhosa, once
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In men, ant-eater, pango- lin
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
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)
- Herluf Christensenb. 1924DKnot in their usual nameDanish sprinter who ate hot dogs
- Ye Westb. 1977USnot in their usual nameAmerican rapper and record producer
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 22 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.1K | #11,094 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2004 | 509 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2005 | 202 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2006 | 101 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2003 | 87 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2008 | 81 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2009 | 64 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2007 | 53 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 45 | #11,094 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2013 | 40 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2012 | 35 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2011 | 35 | — |
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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
- What does the name Kanye mean, and where does it come from?
- Evidently from Igbo Kanye, although inspiration from other African languages may have contributed. Recorded by Wiktionary.
- How do you pronounce Kanye?
- A machine transcription gives /kəɲi/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Kanye a male or female name?
- Kanye 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.
- In which country does Kanye have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.2 thousand people named Kanye, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kanye.
- Where is Kanye most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kanye is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 125 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Kanye?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,173 people named Kanye in 2020, about 1 in 284 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kanye?
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/kanyeThe 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, “Kanye”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.