Kalem
surname · Latin script
Meaning: pen, pencil, or any similar writing tool
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 26 countries · latest register: DZS, 2021
/kaʎem/(machine-generated) Turkish · model-generated
Kalem is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Türkiye than in any other country.
- TRTürkiye≈1 in 12K(inferred from the name graph)
- HRCroatia1 in 19K
- SISlovenia1 in 38K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). 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.
- Türkiye (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 48 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 12K (inferred from the name graph)
≈7,400 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Türkiye, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)pen, pencil, or any similar writing tool
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Kalem is found
(measured from records)Kalem 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.
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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); the dz-kaggle-names 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)Kalem 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 Serbo-Croatian, reel (frame with radial arms)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Javanese, romanization of ꦏꦊꦩ꧀
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In lad, pencil
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Indonesian, calm
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In poz-cet-pro, dark
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
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)- Toni Kalemb. 1956USAmerican actress
- Mohamed Amine Kalemb. 1982ITItalian table tennis player
- Robin Kalemb. 2002DEGerman footballer
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)41 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 26 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kalem mean, and where does it come from?
- pen, pencil, or any similar writing tool Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Kalem?
- In Turkish /kaʎem/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Kalem?
- Mondonomo estimates about 7.4 thousand people named Kalem in Türkiye, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kalem. After it come Algeria, Croatia, France and United States; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Kalem?
- In Croatia, the national register counted 219 people named Kalem in 2021, about 1 in 19 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kalem?
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/kalemThe 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, “Kalem”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.