Kay
given name · Latin script
Meaning: (i) from the medieval male personal name Kay, of Celtic origin, perhaps ultimately from Latin Gaius; (ii) ‘key-maker’ or ‘key-bearer’; (iii) ‘person who lives by or works on a wharf’; (iv) nickname fo
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Kay is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 99th most common given name.
- IEIreland≈1 in 1.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 1.7K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 1.8K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Kay 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #538 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 549 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈660,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Åland Islands, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
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)
(i) from the medieval male personal name Kay, of Celtic origin, perhaps ultimately from Latin Gaius; (ii) ‘key-maker’ or ‘key-bearer’; (iii) ‘person who lives by or works on a wharf’; (iv) nickname for someone like a jackdaw; (v) nickname for a left-handed person; (vi) improvised surname adopted by immigrants with a surname beginning K-.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kay 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈660,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | — | Kay | 52 |
| US United States | #226 | 77,013 | 1 in 4.3K | 75K | Kay | 549 |
| GB United Kingdom | #243 | ≈36,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | 735 | Kay | 290 |
| IT Italy | #401 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.4K | — | Kay | 46 |
| CA Canada | #264 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | 60 | Kay | 207 |
| FI Finland | — | 8,914as Kai | 1 in 625 | 12K | — | 14 |
| NO Norway | #829 | 4,694as Kai | 1 in 1.2K | 12K | Kay | 57 |
| IE Ireland | #132 | ≈3,400 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 101 | Kay | 79 |
| SG Singapore | #99 | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Kay | 98 |
| NZ New Zealand | #159 | ≈2,900 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Kay | 108 |
| AX Åland Islands | #130 | ≈17 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Kay | 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present). 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)
Kay 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 English, from Lat Caius; from a quay/wharf; from ME ka/kay ‘jackdaw’; from ME kei ‘left’/clumsy; possibly key-maker or key-bearer; first attested Britius filius Kay 1199 P (Nth)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In German, from the place name in Frankfurt an der Oder
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In English, metonymic occupational name for a locksmith, from Middle English keye, kaye ‘key’. Compare Care, Kear.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, nickname from Middle English ca ‘jackdaw’, from an unattested Old Norse kd. See also Daw.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, nickname from Middle English cai, kay, kei ‘left-handed’, ‘clumsy’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- Kay Johnsonb. 1904USAmerican actress (1904–1975)
- Kay Medfordb. 1919USAmerican actress (1919–1980)
- Kay Kendallb. 1927GBEnglish actress (1927-1959)
- Tippi Hedrenb. 1930USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress, model and activist
- Kay Iveyb. 1944USGovernor of Alabama since 2017
- Xanana Gusmãob. 1946TLnot in their usual namePrime Minister and former President of East Timor
- Sandy Duncanb. 1946USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress, comedian, dancer and singer (born 1946)
- Mary Kay Bergmanb. 1961USAmerican voice actress
- Calista Flockhartb. 1964USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress
- Missi Pyleb. 1972USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress and singer
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 99 sources across 50 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 24K | #1,467 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 23K | #1,402 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 23K | #1,538 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 116 | #13,539 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 56 | #20,563 |
Reference works 8
- 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 given-name tokens
- 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
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Kay mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) from the medieval male personal name Kay, of Celtic origin, perhaps ultimately from Latin Gaius; (ii) ‘key-maker’ or ‘key-bearer’; (iii) ‘person who lives by or works on a wharf’; (iv) nickname fo… Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Is Kay a male or female name?
- Kay is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- What are other forms of the name Kay?
- In the etymology graph, Kathy, Karina and Cathy are forms of the same name in other languages; Katie, Kayla and Kaylee are recorded short or pet forms; it is recorded as a short form of Katherine and Kathryn.
- In which country does Kay have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 664 thousand people named Kay in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kay.
- How common is the name Kay?
- In the United States, the national register counted 77,013 people named Kay in 2020, about 1 in 4.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Kay compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Kay is the 99th most common given name of 52,448 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kay?
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/kayThe 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, “Kay” — the 99th most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.