Kahane
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Meir, activist rabbi
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/kəˈhɑˌneɪ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kahane is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Romania than in any other country.
- RORomania≈1 in 4.6K(inferred from the name graph)
- ILIsrael1 in 2.6Kas כהנא
- USUnited States1 in 156Kas Kahan
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 Kahane itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Romania (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 180 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈4,600 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Romania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled כהנא in IL Israel, RO Romania, LB Lebanon and 3 more.
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)
Meir, activist rabbi
Sources 1
- Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kahane 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RO Romania | #258 | ≈4,600 est. | ≈1 in 4.6K | — | כהנא | 8 |
| IL Israel | #169 | 3,298as כהנא | 1 in 2.6K | 3.3K | כהנא | 57 |
| US United States | — | 2,133as Kahan | 1 in 156K | 2.5K | Kahane | 180 |
| LB Lebanon | #661 | ≈660 est. | ≈1 in 8.3K | — | כהנא | 1 |
| DZ Algeria | — | ≈250 est. | ≈1 in 171K | — | כהנא | 1 |
| HU Hungary | — | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 52K | — | כהנא | 3 |
| NO Norway | — | ≈71 est. | ≈1 in 77K | — | כהנא | 2 |
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: CBS Israel — Family names in Israel, 2017 ("שמות משפחה בישראל 2017"); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Kahane 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.
one of the many forms of Cohen.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- David Kohnb. 1838UAnot in their usual nameJudaic scholar (1838-1915)
- Abraham Kahanab. 1874UAnot in their usual nameJudaism researcher (1874-1946)
- Jack Kahaneb. 1887GBBritish publisher (1887–1939)
- Dawid Kahaneb. 1903ILIsraeli rabbi and military personnel (1903–1998)
- Doris Kahaneb. 1920DEGerman artist (1920-1976)
- Jean-Pierre Kahaneb. 1926FRFrench mathematician (1926-2017)
- Meir Kahaneb. 1932USRabbi, writer and far right American-Israeli politician (1932–1990)
- Peter Kahaneb. 1949DEGerman film director and screenwriter
- Anetta Kahaneb. 1954DEGerman journalist and author and activist against antisemitism, racism and right-wing extremism
- Jeffrey Kahaneb. 1956USAmerican pianist and conductor
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)
Attested in 15 sources across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 315 | #59,916 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 313 | #63,698 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 301 | #70,147 |
| 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
- What does the name Kahane mean, and where does it come from?
- Meir, activist rabbi Recorded by Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names.
- How do you pronounce Kahane?
- A machine transcription gives /kəˈhɑˌneɪ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kahane have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 4.6 thousand people named Kahane in Romania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled כהנא.
- How common is the name Kahane?
- In Israel, the national register counted 3,298 people named כהנא in 2017, about 1 in 2.6 thousand residents.
- How common is Kahane compared with other names?
- In Romania, Kahane is the 258th most common surname of 78,699 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kahane?
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/kahaneThe 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, “Kahane” — the 258th most common surname in Romania. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.