Kee
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Alternative form of kye (“cow”)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Kee is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Malaysia than in any other country.
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 1.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- SGSingapore≈1 in 2.9K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 35K
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.
- Malaysia (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 396 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈18,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Malaysia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Alternative form of kye (“cow”).
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kee 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MY Malaysia | #245 | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Kee | 107 |
| US United States | — | 9,049 | 1 in 37K | 9.2K | Kee | 396 |
| SG Singapore | #204 | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | — | Kee | 129 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 35K | — | Kee | 150 |
| HK Hong Kong | #383 | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 5.1K | — | Kee | 58 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 34K | — | Kee | 32 |
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 2000. 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)
Kee 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, ME ke ‘jackdaw’; first attested John Kese 1379 PTY
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
reduced form of McKee.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In cdo, short drawers, breeches, a wooden water-cistern, met., to lay the blame on submet., to spend as fast as one earns
as a wordDictionary of the Foochow Dialect
ISO 639-3 language code for Eastern Keres.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In pdc, no; not a(n); not one; not any
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)
- Ji Yunb. 1724CNnot in their usual nameChinese Qing dynasty scholar (1724-1805)
- Piet Keeb. 1927NLDutch organist and composer (1927–2018)
- Chi Chengb. 1944TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese track and field athlete and Republic of China politician
- Gi Ju-bongb. 1955KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actor
- Ki Dong-minb. 1966KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean politician
- Ki Min-soob. 1970KRnot in their usual nameProducer and planner for KBS channel
- Ki Tae-youngb. 1978KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actor
- Ki Bo-baeb. 1988KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean archer
- Ki Sung-yuengb. 1989KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean association football player
- Billy Keeb. 1990GBNorthern Irish association football player (born 1990)
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 34 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 9.2K | #3,557 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 9K | #3,932 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 8.3K | #4,140 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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)
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 Kee mean, and where does it come from?
- Alternative form of kye (“cow”). Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Kee have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 18 thousand people named Kee in Malaysia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kee.
- How common is the name Kee?
- In the United States, the national register counted 9,049 people named Kee in 2010, about 1 in 37 thousand residents.
- How common is Kee compared with other names?
- In Malaysia, Kee is the 245th most common surname of 291,743 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kee?
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/keeThe 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, “Kee” — the 245th most common surname in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.