King
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Probably mainly a medieval nickname for someone with a regal demeanour, but also denoting a royal servant or pageant king
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kɪŋ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
King is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Pakistan than in any other country. In Australia it is the 23rd most common surname.
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 565(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 567
- AUAustralia≈1 in 593
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.
- Pakistan (inferred from the name graph)
- #194 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 629 (measured from records)
- 1 in 144 (inferred from the name graph)
≈480,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
St. Vincent & Grenadines
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)
Probably mainly a medieval nickname for someone with a regal demeanour, but also denoting a royal servant or pageant king.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
King 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈480,000 est. | ≈1 in 482 | — | King | 47 |
| US United States | #35 | 465,422 | 1 in 715 | 465K | King | 629 |
| GB United Kingdom | #29 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 567 | — | King | 356 |
| EG Egypt | #204 | ≈65,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | King | 63 |
| CA Canada | #26 | ≈51,000 est. | ≈1 in 744 | 9 | King | 296 |
| AU Australia | #23 | ≈43,000 est. | ≈1 in 593 | — | King | 316 |
| NZ New Zealand | #26 | ≈8,700 est. | ≈1 in 565 | — | King | 173 |
| GY Guyana | — | 2,021 | 1 in 371 | 2K | — | 19 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | — | 705 | 1 in 144 | 705 | — | 12 |
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; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025). 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)
King is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
From the town Königsberg, East Prussia, today Kalingrad (Russia).
as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
In English, Martin Luther, Jr., US civil right
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In German, personal-characteristic surname from Alem. Küng/König 'king'; bearers: 844
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In English, from OE cyning, cyng ‘king’; earliest attested King 1201 Cur (C)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, A male monarch; a man who heads a monarchy; in an absolute monarchy, the supreme ruler of his nation.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Ada Lovelaceb. 1815GBnot in their usual nameEnglish mathematician (1815–1852)
- William Lyon Mackenzie Kingb. 1874CA10th Prime Minister of Canada (1874–1950)
- Coretta Scott Kingb. 1927USAmerican author, activist, and civil rights leader; wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.b. 1929USAmerican Baptist minister and civil rights leader (1929–1968)
- Larry Kingb. 1933USAmerican television and radio host (1933–2021)
- Billie Jean Kingb. 1943USAmerican tennis player (born 1943)
- Stephen Kingb. 1947USAmerican novelist and writer (born 1947)
- Regina Kingb. 1971USAmerican actress and director (born 1971)
- Ledley Kingb. 1980GBEnglish association football player (born 1980)
- Joey Kingb. 1999USAmerican actress (born 1999)
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 98 sources across 53 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 465K | #34 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 454K | #36 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 439K | #35 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 2K | #32 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025) | 2025 | 705 | #19 |
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 given-name tokens
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 King mean, and where does it come from?
- Probably mainly a medieval nickname for someone with a regal demeanour, but also denoting a royal servant or pageant king. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does King have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 484 thousand people named King in Pakistan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled king.
- Where is King most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, King is densest in St. Vincent & Grenadines — about 1 in 144 people — even though Pakistan holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name King?
- In the United States, the national register counted 465,422 people named King in 2010, about 1 in 715 residents.
- How common is King compared with other names?
- In Australia, King is the 23rd most common surname of 552,428 surnames recorded there.
- How do you pronounce King?
- A machine transcription gives /kɪŋ/ (IPA) for English.
- What are other forms of the name King?
- In the etymology graph, König, Król and Kinge are forms of the same name in other languages.
What do you want to know about King?
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/kingThe 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, “King” — the 23rd most common surname in Australia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.