Kawai
surname · Latin script
Meaning: variously written, the original meaning is ‘meeting of (two) rivers’
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 14 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Kawai is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Japan than in any other country.
- JPJapan≈1 in 1.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- EEEstonia≈1 in 140K
- ECEcuador≈1 in 190K
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.
- Japan (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 140 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈83,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Japan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)variously written, the original meaning is ‘meeting of (two) rivers’. An ancient family by this name is listed in the Shinsen shojiroku. The most usual renderings are found mostly in eastern Japan; families in different localities seem to have their own different ways of writing the name. In Okinawa Island, it is written with characters meaning ‘river weir.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Kawai 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JP Japan | #350 | ≈83,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | listed | Kawai | 137 |
| BR Brazil | — | ≈990 est. | ≈1 in 215K | 122 | — | 1 |
| US United States | — | 769 | 1 in 433K | 771 | Kawai | 140 |
| HK Hong Kong | — | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 36K | — | Kawai | 11 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 940K | — | Kawai | 13 |
| EC Ecuador | — | ≈94 est. | ≈1 in 192K | 1 | — | 1 |
| FI Finland | — | 29 | 1 in 192K | 29 | — | — |
| EE Estonia | — | ≈10 est. | ≈1 in 136K | listed | — | 4 |
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: the japanese-names-oneill-1972 register; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024). 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)Kawai 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 Hawaiian, a male or female given name from Hawaiian
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In mch, tobacco, Nicotiana tabacum
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)- Kawai Gyokudōb. 1873JPJapanese Nihonga painter (1873-1957)
- Masao Kawaib. 1924JPJapanese zoologist, children's writer, doctor of science (1924–2021)
- Nobuo Kawaib. 1932JPJapanese actor and seiyū (1932-2006)
- Kenji Kawaib. 1957JPJapanese composer
- Kazumi Kawaib. 1964JPJapanese actor and singer (1964-1997)
- Sonoko Kawaib. 1965JPJapanese singer, actress
- Eri Kawaib. 1965JPJapanese singer-songwriter (1965-2008)
- Honami Suzukib. 1966JPnot in their usual nameJapanese actress
- Risako Kawaib. 1994JPJapanese amateur wrestler
- Yukako Kawaib. 1997JPJapanese amateur wrestler (1997-)
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)27 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 771 | #32,060 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 769 | #30,390 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 711 | #30,900 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 511 | #16,783 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 29 | #39,113 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2004 | 1 | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | — | 1 | — |
| JP Japan | Japanese Names (O'Neill, 1972) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname 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
- Where does the name Kawai come from?
- variously written, the original meaning is ‘meeting of (two) rivers’. An ancient family by this name is listed in the Shinsen shojiroku. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- What does the name Kawai mean?
- Recorded meaning: variously written, the original meaning is ‘meeting of (two) rivers’.
- In which country does Kawai have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 83 thousand people named Kawai in Japan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kawai.
- How common is the name Kawai?
- In the United States, the national register counted 769 people named Kawai in 2010, about 1 in 433 thousand residents.
- How common is Kawai compared with other names?
- In Japan, Kawai is the 350th most common surname of 142,159 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kawai?
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/kawaiThe 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, “Kawai” — the 350th most common surname in Japan. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.