Kanai
given name · Latin script
Meaning: ‘gold well’. The name is found mostly in the Tokyo area and the Ryukyu Islands
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kəˈnaɪ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kanai is a given name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in India.
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)
‘gold well’. The name is found mostly in the Tokyo area and the Ryukyu Islands.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kanai counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | — | 481 | — |
| US United States | — | 398 | — |
| PW Palau | — | 268 | — |
| BR Brazil | — | 218 | — |
| NO Norway | — | 8 | — |
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 2020; This page discusses Palauan surnames, highlighting their cultural significance and frequency, published by the National; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Kanai 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 Russian, Kanai, tsarevich. 1601.
as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
In jpx-pro, rule, gusset
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
In wau, where (to where)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In blq, canarium almond
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In jpx-pro, metal
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)
- Katsu Kanaib. 1936JPJapanese film director
- Seiichi Kanaib. 1940JPJapanese golfer (1940-2022)
- Yoshiko Kanaib. 1944JPJapanese academic and feminist scholar
- Katsuko Kanaib. 1945JPJapanese actor, singer, and dancer
- Mieko Kanaib. 1947JPJapanese writer
- Tatsuo Kanaib. 1955JPJapanese mangaka
- Mika Kanaib. 1964JPJapanese voice actress
- Norishige Kanaib. 1976JPJapanese astronaut
- Asami Kanaib. 1984JPJapanese actor and model
- Takashi Kanaib. 1990JPJapanese 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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 31 sources across 19 countries.
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Kanai mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘gold well’. The name is found mostly in the Tokyo area and the Ryukyu Islands. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kanai?
- A machine transcription gives /kəˈnaɪ/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- Is Kanai a male or female name?
- Kanai is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Kanai have the most bearers?
- Kanai is most frequently recorded in India.
What do you want to know about Kanai?
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/kanaiThe 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, “Kanai”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.