Kawaï
surname · Latin script
Kawaï is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Japan than in any other country. Recorded meaning: ka (“the”) + wai (“water”); also a short form of compound given names beginning thus.
- JPJapan≈1 in 1.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- EEEstonia≈1 in 140K
- ECEcuador≈1 in 190K
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.
- Japan (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 140 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈83,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Japan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Kawai in JP Japan, US United States, PH Philippines and 1 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)ka (“the”) + wai (“water”); also a short form of compound given names beginning thus.
Cited for this meaning 2
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wiktionary
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Kawaï is found
(measured from records)Kawaï 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JP Japan | #350 | ≈83,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | listed | Kawai | 137 |
| BR Brazil | — | ≈990 est. | ≈1 in 215K | 122 | — | 1 |
| US United States | — | 769 | 1 in 433K | 771 | Kawai | 140 |
| HK Hong Kong | — | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 36K | — | Kawai | 11 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 940K | — | Kawai | 13 |
| EC Ecuador | — | ≈94 est. | ≈1 in 192K | 1 | — | 1 |
| FI Finland | — | 29 | 1 in 192K | 29 | — | — |
| EE Estonia | — | ≈10 est. | ≈1 in 136K | listed | — | 4 |
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 — Surname Frequency 2020; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024). 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).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kawaï mean, and where does it come from?
- ka (“the”) + wai (“water”); also a short form of compound given names beginning thus. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and Wiktionary.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Kawaï?
- Mondonomo estimates about 83 thousand people named Kawaï in Japan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kawai. After it come Brazil, United States, Hong Kong and Philippines; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Kawaï?
- In the United States, the national register counted 769 people named Kawaï in 2010, about 1 in 433 thousand residents.
- How common is Kawaï compared with other names?
- In Japan, Kawaï is the 350th most common surname of 142,159 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kawaï?
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/kawa%C3%AFThe 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, “Kawaï” — the 350th most common surname in Japan. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.