Kui
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A Dravidian language spoken by the Khonds, in the eastern Indian state of Odisha
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 16 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Kui is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 12Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- PGPapua New Guinea≈1 in 91K
- ECEcuador≈1 in 640K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Kui itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 43 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 12K (inferred from the name graph)
33,501 named Key, 2010
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Malaysia, est.
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)A Dravidian language spoken by the Khonds, in the eastern Indian state of Odisha.
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Kui is read
(measured from records)Kui is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Hindi67%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kui in Hindi.
- English10%
A Dravidian language spoken by the Khonds, in the eastern Indian state of Odisha.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
lang.. people. India
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Chinese7.1%
nonstandard spelling of kuī
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Malay5.7%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kui in Malay.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where the surname Kui is found
(measured from records)Kui 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 | 33,501as Key | 1 in 9.9K | 34K | Kui | 34 |
| MY Malaysia | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Kui | 11 |
| HK Hong Kong | ≈630 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Kui | 4 |
| KE Kenya | ≈450 est. | ≈1 in 124K | — | Kui | 13 |
| PK Pakistan | ≈420 est. | ≈1 in 604K | 1 | — | 5 |
| IN India | 413 | 1 in 3.2M | 413 | Kui | 18 |
| PG Papua New Guinea | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 91K | 8 | — | — |
| SG Singapore | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 58K | — | Kui | 3 |
33,501 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling key. 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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; PNG Election Results Database — candidate names (1972–2022); 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)Kui is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Russian, "forge."
as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
In Hawaiian, to string pierced objects, as flowers in a lei, or fish; to thread, as beads; needle, pin, spike, nail, screw, any pointed instrument of wood or metal; to sting
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In hrx, calabash; gourd (dried and hardened shell of a gourd fruit)
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)- Gui Youguangb. 1506CNnot in their usual namewriter
- Gui Zhuangb. 1613CNnot in their usual nameQing dynasty writer (1613-1673)
- Kuei Ya-leib. 1944TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese actress
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)26 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 16 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kui mean, and where does it come from?
- A Dravidian language spoken by the Khonds, in the eastern Indian state of Odisha. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Kui?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 34 thousand people named Key, more than in any other country we hold. After it come Malaysia, Hong Kong, Kenya and Pakistan; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Kui?
- In India, the national register counted 413 people named Kui, about 1 in 3.2 million residents.
What do you want to know about Kui?
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/kuiThe 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, “Kui”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.