Kiai
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: The short yell or shout uttered when performing an attacking move in martial arts
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/kiai/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kiai is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
The short yell or shout uttered when performing an attacking move in martial arts.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
How Kiai is read(measured from records)
Kiai is one spelling over 4 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.
- Swahili45%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kiai in Swahili.
- English26%
The short yell or shout uttered when performing an attacking move in martial arts.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Malay12%
ulema
as a wordrecorded as Indonesiankaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French5.2%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kiai in French.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Kiai counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 7 | — |
| NL Netherlands | — | 5 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | — | listed | — |
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: SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007). 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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 5 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 5 | #78,228 |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Kiai mean, and where does it come from?
- The short yell or shout uttered when performing an attacking move in martial arts. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Kiai?
- A machine transcription gives /kiai/ (IPA) for Swahili.
- In which country does Kiai have the most bearers?
- Kiai is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Kiai?
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/kiaiThe 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, “Kiai”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.