Kawashima
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ‘river island’; mostly found in eastern Japan and the Ryu kyu Islands
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˌkɑwɑˈʃimə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kawashima is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country.
- BRBrazil1 in 591K(measured from records)
- PLPoland1 in 5.2Kas Kawa
- NONorway1 in 45Kas Kawa
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Kawashima 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.
- Poland (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 18 (measured from records)
- 1 in 591K (inferred from the name graph)
7,390 named Kawa, 2026
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Brazil
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Kawa in IN India.
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)
‘river island’; mostly found in eastern Japan and the Ryu kyu Islands.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kawashima 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 | 7,390as Kawa | 1 in 5.2K | 3.7K | — | — |
| US United States | 1,192as Kawa | 1 in 279K | 1.2K | Kawashima | 4 |
| BR Brazil | 358 | 1 in 591K | 1.8K | — | — |
| IN India | 130as Kawa | 1 in 10M | 130 | Kawa | 5 |
| NO Norway | 122as Kawa | 1 in 45K | 282 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | 57as Kawa | 1 in 103K | 108 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 31as Kawa | 1 in 271K | 31 | — | — |
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); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Yoshiko Kawashimab. 1907CNJapanese spy in China (1907-1948)
- Naomi Kawashimab. 1960JPJapanese actress and talent (1960-2015)
- Kiko, Crown Princess of Japanb. 1966JPnot in their usual nameJapanese princess; wife of Fumihito, Crown Prince Akishino
- Daria Kawashimab. 1967JPJapanese composer, vocalist, lyricist, model (1967-)
- Tokuyoshi Kawashimab. 1973JPJapanese voice actor
- Gekidan Hitorib. 1977JPnot in their usual nameJapanese comedian, actor, novelist and film director
- Kawashima Azumib. 1979JPJapanese AV idol
- Eiji Kawashimab. 1983JPJapanese footballer (born 1983)
- Ai Kawashimab. 1986JPJapanese singer
- Haruna Kawashimab. 1993JPJapanese 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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 16 sources across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 548 | #38,035 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 477 | #44,957 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 461 | #49,315 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 358 | #22,805 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 4 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 4 | #226,981 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 3 | #154,370 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #346,385 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
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 Kawashima mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘river island’; mostly found in eastern Japan and the Ryu kyu Islands. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kawashima?
- A machine transcription gives /ˌkɑwɑˈʃimə/ (IPA) for Japanese.
- In which country does Kawashima 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 is Kawashima most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kawashima is densest in Brazil — about 1 in 591 thousand people — even though Poland holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Kawashima?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 358 people named Kawashima, about 1 in 591 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kawashima?
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/kawashimaThe 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, “Kawashima”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.