Kwee

given name · Latin script

Meaning: Contraction of can we

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Kwee is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Malaysia than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • MYMalaysia≈1 in 5.2K(inferred from the name graph)
  • IDIndonesia≈1 in 57K
  • MMMyanmar (Burma)≈1 in 176K

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.

Malaysia (inferred from the name graph)

≈6,300 people, est.

Sources
89 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 5.2K (inferred from the name graph)

Malaysia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Contraction of can we

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Where in the world(measured from records)

Kwee 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.

Where Kwee is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
MY Malaysia#839≈6,300 est.≈1 in 5.2K—Kwee61
ID Indonesia—≈4,700 est.≈1 in 57KlistedKwee89
SG Singapore#743≈630 est.≈1 in 9.8K—Kwee61
MM Myanmar (Burma)#118≈320 est.≈1 in 176K—Kwee3
US United States—≈190 est.≈1 in 1.8M261Kwee33
GB United Kingdom—≈40 est.≈1 in 1.6M—Kwee8
NL Netherlands—51 in 3.5M430Kwee14

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 id-github-names register; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Kwee is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, United States, Singapore, Australia

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Kwée, Kwëë, Kwèé, Kwèê, Kwêê

  • Spanish given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, United States, Singapore, Colombia

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Kwëē

  • Arabic given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, Singapore, Egypt

    Also written Kwêê

  • French given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, Singapore, France

    Also written Kwêë, Kwéè, Kŵéé, Kwée

  • Russian given name8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, Russia

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Гиам, Giam, Giảm

34 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Kwee is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Dutch, quince (Cydonia oblonga, plant or 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)

19001920194019601980Visakha Gunadharma, b. 1907Swan Liat Kwee, b. 1922Hian Yanoe Kwee, b. 1940Robert Kwee, b. 1980

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 11 sources across 5 countries.

Official registers attesting Kwee
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—5#27,027
ID IndonesiaKPU voter-roll name tokens (GitHub)———

Reference works 2

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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

What does the name Kwee mean, and where does it come from?
Contraction of can we Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
Is Kwee a male or female name?
Kwee is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
In which country does Kwee have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 6.3 thousand people named Kwee in Malaysia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kwee.
How common is the name Kwee?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted 5 people named Kwee, about 1 in 3.5 million residents.
How common is Kwee compared with other names?
In Malaysia, Kwee is the 839th most common given name of 388,685 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Kwee?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kwee

The 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, “Kwee” — the 839th most common given name in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Kwee parses inside a full name →