Kim
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Kim is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In the Netherlands it is the 56th most common given name. Recorded meaning: Chad: a people from the Somrai language group; also English short form of Kimberly, "ruler of the royal fortress".
- AUAustralia≈1 in 464(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 479
- NLNetherlands≈1 in 540
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)
- #293 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 631 (measured from records)
- 1 in 208 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,800,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
Highest-authority source
Denmark
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Chad: a people from the Somrai language group; also English short form of Kimberly, "ruler of the royal fortress".
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kim 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 | — | ≈1,800,000 est. | ≈1 in 785 | — | Kim | 87 |
| US United States | #132 | 246,384 | 1 in 1.4K | 274K | Kim | 631 |
| GB United Kingdom | #151 | ≈95,000 est. | ≈1 in 691 | — | Kim | 351 |
| CA Canada | #88 | ≈70,000 est. | ≈1 in 541 | 2 | Kim | 306 |
| MY Malaysia | #84 | ≈68,000 est. | ≈1 in 479 | — | Kim | 113 |
| AU Australia | #77 | ≈55,000 est. | ≈1 in 464 | — | Kim | 297 |
| NL Netherlands | #56 | ≈32,000 est. | ≈1 in 540 | 26K | Kim | 156 |
| DK Denmark | — | 28,192 | 1 in 208 | 28K | — | 9 |
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; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Kim 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.
In French, Short form used for several names, often from English Kimberley or South Asian names.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In Korean, Silla aristocratic clan mentioned as having a divine-origin myth.
as a nameKorea - A Historical and Cultural Dictionary
In Korean, Korean surname; specific clan seat not given.
as a nameKorea - A Historical and Cultural Dictionary
, 3 Originally a short form of Kimberley, now established as an independent given name. The hero of Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim (1901) bore the name as a short form of Kimball (a surname used as a given name). In recent years, as a girl’s name it has been borne by a number of well-known people, including the film stars Kim Novak (b. 1933) and Kim Bassinger (b. 1953).
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, Alternative form of gim (“edible seaweed”).
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)
- Kim Philbyb. 1912GBKGB mole for the Soviet Union (1912–1988)
- Kim Hunterb. 1922USAmerican actress (1922-2002)
- Kim Campbellb. 1947CA19th Prime Minister of Canada in 1993
- Kim Stanley Robinsonb. 1952USAmerican science fiction writer (born 1952)
- Nicolas Cageb. 1964USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor (born 1964)
- Kim Kielsenb. 1966former Prime Minister of Greenland
- Idina Menzelb. 1971USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress and singer
- Nelly Furtadob. 1978CAnot in their usual namePortuguese-Canadian singer and songwriter
- Kim Källströmb. 1982SESwedish association football player
- Kim Clijstersb. 1983BEBelgian tennis 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)
Attested in 132 sources across 62 countries.
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
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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
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 Kim mean, and where does it come from?
- Chad: a people from the Somrai language group; also English short form of Kimberly, "ruler of the royal fortress". Recorded by African Names.
- Is Kim a male or female name?
- Kim is a female 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.
- How common is the name Kim?
- In the United States, the national register counted 246,384 people named Kim in 2020, about 1 in 1.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Kim compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Kim is the 56th most common given name of 101,916 given names recorded there.
- What are other forms of the name Kim?
- In the etymology graph, Jo, Edie and Kym are forms of the same name in other languages; Kimmy and Kimmie are recorded short or pet forms.
- In which country does Kim have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.8 million people named Kim in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kim.
- Where is Kim most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kim is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 208 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
What do you want to know about Kim?
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/kimThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Kim” — the 56th most common given name in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.