Kaal
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Dutch: without defining features, smooth, bland, plain
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Kaal is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 19K(measured from records)
- FIFinland1 in 151K
- SESweden1 in 1.3M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Netherlands (measured from records)
- Sources
- 22 (measured from records)
- 1 in 19K (inferred from the name graph)
905 people, 2007
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
without defining features, smooth, bland, plain
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
How Kaal is read(measured from records)
Kaal is one spelling over 6 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.
- English27%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kaal in English.
- Dutch17%
without defining features, smooth, bland, plain
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German15%
Übername zu kahl 'kahl, haarlos'; im Text als westdeutscher Streuungsname erwähnt.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
- Spanish7.0%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kaal in Spanish.
- Arabic6.6%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kaal in Arabic.
- Estonian6.6%
weight (the numerical value)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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 in the world(measured from records)
Kaal 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.
905 people counted by CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007), 2007. 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: CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register). 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)
Kaal 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 Khmer, to get stuck (in speech, thought, arguments). 2. p. to run aground, to be stranded, to ground (naut,). (- Ex. : 1 The boat is aground on a tnjfSJtM sand bank. g ., ,i„ck in the middle of a sentence (or of an argu- ® ment) while speaking. p. to run aground, to be stranded, to ground. Crf]fi
as a wordHeadley, Cambodian-English Dictionary, Volume I (ក-ភ)
In wim, mother's younger brother; uncle
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Norwegian Nynorsk, obsolete typography of kål
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)
- Aleksander Kaalb. 1876EEEstonian politician (1876-1941)
- Johannes Kaalb. 1901EEEstonian actor (1901-1984)
- Aira Kaalb. 1911EEEstonian author, journalist and poet (1911-1988)
- Hillar Kaalb. 1930EEEstonian mountaineer (1930-1983)
- Meertje Kaalb. 1930NLDutch painter and poet, 1930-2016
- Anu Kaalb. 1940EEEstonian opera singer, music educator and actor (born 1940)
- Mati Kaalb. 1946EEEstonian zoologist (born 1946)
- Vambo Kaalb. 1949EEEstonian politician and veterinarian (born 1949)
- Urmas Kaalb. 1973EEEstonian association football player (born 1973)
- Jeske Kaalb. 1984NLDutch association football 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 15 sources across 10 countries.
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 Kaal mean, and where does it come from?
- without defining features, smooth, bland, plain Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Kaal have the most bearers?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 905 people named Kaal, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kaal.
- Where is Kaal most common?
- Kaal is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 19 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Kaal?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 905 people named Kaal in 2007, about 1 in 19 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kaal?
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/kaalThe 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, “Kaal”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.