Kî
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Kî is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Pakistan than in any other country. Recorded meaning: there are two Chinese characters for the surname Ki, but one is extremely rare. Only the common one is discussed here. Only one Ki clan uses this other character, the Haengju Ki clan.
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 2.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- DZAlgeria≈1 in 5.9K
- KPNorth Korea≈1 in 9.7K
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)
- Sources
- 301 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈8,500 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Hong Kong, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Ki in US United States, VN Vietnam, HK Hong Kong, 키 in KR South Korea, Kí in DZ Algeria and K-I in DE Germany.
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)
there are two Chinese characters for the surname Ki, but one is extremely rare. Only the common one is discussed here. Only one Ki clan uses this other character, the Haengju Ki clan. The founder of the Haengju Ki clan, U-S6ng, is said to have been one of three sons of the 40th generation descendant of Kija, the founder of the ancient Choson kingdom in about 194 BC. The other two sons, UP’yong and U-kyong, founded the Han clan and the Son’gan clan respectively.
Sources 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Digital Pāḷi Dictionary
- Etymological Dictionary of Hungarian
- YorùbáName Dictionary
- YorùbáName Dictionary (unreviewed entries)
Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kî 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 | — | ≈8,500 est. | ≈1 in 28K | 1 | — | 18 |
| DZ Algeria | — | ≈7,300 est. | ≈1 in 5.9K | — | Kí | 7 |
| VN Vietnam | — | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Ki | 70 |
| HK Hong Kong | — | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Ki | 95 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 29K | — | K-I | 5 |
| KP North Korea | — | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 9.7K | 2 | — | 20 |
| KR South Korea | #482 | ≈810 est. | ≈1 in 64K | 30K | 키 | 170 |
| US United States | — | 784 | 1 in 424K | 2.3K | Ki | 301 |
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: KOSIS — 2015 census surnames; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) — Form-33 List of Contesting Candidates, 2018 General Election. 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)
Kî 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 Walloon, who (interrogative pronoun, subject, possibly being followed by "çki" or "k'")
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Kurdish, who (interrogative)
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)
- Qi Xub. 950not in their usual nameSong dynasty painter
- Qi Chengyeb. 1563not in their usual nameMing dynasty person CBDB = 33171 (1563–1628)
- Biaojia Qib. 1602not in their usual namepolitician
- Qi Jingyib. 1656not in their usual nameChinese sufi
- Qi Junzaob. 1793CNnot in their usual nameQing dynasty official and calligrapher (1793–1866)
- Chi Chia-weib. 1958TWnot in their usual nameSocial activist
- Qi Hongb. 1976CNnot in their usual nameChinese footballer
- Xiao-Liang Qib. 1983CNnot in their usual nameChinese condensed matter physicist at Stanford University
- Qi Yunfeib. 1989CNnot in their usual nameChinese footballer
- Qi Liheb. 1991CNnot in their usual nameChinese Go player
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kî mean, and where does it come from?
- there are two Chinese characters for the surname Ki, but one is extremely rare. Only the common one is discussed here. Only one Ki clan uses this other character, the Haengju Ki clan. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and Digital Pāḷi Dictionary and 3 other sources.
- In which country does Kî have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 8.5 thousand people named Kî in Pakistan, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Kî?
- In the United States, the national register counted 784 people named Kî in 2010, about 1 in 424 thousand residents.
- How common is Kî compared with other names?
- In South Korea, Kî is the 482nd most common surname of 14,133 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kî?
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/k%C3%AEThe 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, “Kî” — the 482nd most common surname in South Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.