Kawa
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Polish: coffee (beverage made by infusing the beans of the coffee plant in hot water)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈkɑwə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kawa is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country.
- PLPoland1 in 5.2K(measured from records)
- SLSierra Leone≈1 in 12K
- NONorway1 in 45K
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.
- Poland (measured from records)
- Sources
- 96 (measured from records)
- 1 in 5.2K (inferred from the name graph)
7,390 people, 2026
Highest-authority source
Poland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
coffee (beverage made by infusing the beans of the coffee plant in hot water)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
How Kawa is read(measured from records)
Kawa is one spelling over 5 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.
- English39%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kawa in English.
- Polish13%
coffee (beverage made by infusing the beans of the coffee plant in hot water)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
nickname from kawka ‘jackdaw’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
- Japanese11%
Rōmaji transcription of かわ
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Swahili7.5%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kawa in Swahili.
- Hindi6.4%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kawa in Hindi.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Kawa 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | #529 | 7,390 | 1 in 5.2K | 3.7K | Kawa | 96 |
| US United States | — | 1,192 | 1 in 279K | 1.2K | Kawa | 85 |
| KE Kenya | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 51K | 1 | — | 3 |
| SL Sierra Leone | — | ≈550 est. | ≈1 in 12K | 2 | — | — |
| FR France | — | ≈410 est. | ≈1 in 168K | 7 | Kawa | 1 |
| NO Norway | — | 122 | 1 in 45K | 282 | Kawa | 8 |
| EE Estonia | — | ≈16 est. | ≈1 in 78K | listed | — | — |
7,390 people counted by dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames), 2026. 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: dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); NEC/ECSL — 2018 Local Council, Chairperson and Mayor nominated candidates; Mzalendo Trust "Elections Watch" — 2022 gazetted election winners. 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)
Kawa 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 Kurdish, Kawa the Blacksmith, name of the legendary hero who rose against tyranny and brought freedom
as a wordkurdi.sh Kurdish personal names dictionary
In Māori, unpleasant to the taste, bitter, sour; a sprig of any tree, or sometimes a small sapling pulled up by the roots, used in certain ceremonies
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In dob, rock cod, coral cod, reef cod, coral trout
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)
- Franciszek Kawab. 1901PLPolish sportsperson and athletics competitor (1901–1985)
- Florence Kawab. 1912USAmerican painter (1912–2008)
- Zuzanna Drulis-Kawab. 1950PLPolish molecular biologist and microbiologist
- Marian Kawab. 1955PLPolish politician and deputy
- Sebastian Kawab. 1972PLPolish glider pilot
- Marek Kawab. 1975PLPolish politician
- Eduard Kavab. 1978UAnot in their usual nameUkrainian Roman Catholic Bishop
- Jakub Kawab. 1988PLPolish footballer
- Katarzyna Kawab. 1992PLPolish female tennis player
- Cree Kawab. 2002actor
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 53 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 3.7K | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 3.7K | #600 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 3.7K | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 3.7K | #607 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.2K | #21,811 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.2K | #22,790 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.1K | #22,011 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 122 | #12,884 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 7 | — |
| SL Sierra Leone | NEC/ECSL — 2018 Local Council, Chairperson and Mayor nominated candidates | 2018 | 2 | #32 |
| SL Sierra Leone | NEC/ECSL — 2012 Councillor and Ordinary-MP/PCMP results tables | 2012 | 2 | #23 |
| SL Sierra Leone | NEC/ECSL — 2012 parliamentary and Local Council nominated candidates | 2012 | 2 | #23 |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
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 Kawa mean, and where does it come from?
- coffee (beverage made by infusing the beans of the coffee plant in hot water) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Kawa?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɑwə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kawa have the most bearers?
- In Poland, the national register counted about 7.4 thousand people named Kawa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kawa.
- Where is Kawa most common?
- Kawa is densest in Poland, where the national register counts about 1 in 5.2 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Kawa?
- In Poland, the national register counted 7,390 people named Kawa in 2026, about 1 in 5.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Kawa compared with other names?
- In Poland, Kawa is the 529th most common surname of 240,840 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kawa?
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/kawaThe 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, “Kawa” — the 529th most common surname in Poland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.