Kiraly

surname · Latin script

Meaning: nickname from kiraly ‘king’, from western Slavic krai (Czech krai), derivative of the personal name Karl ‘Charles’, the name of the Frankish king and Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne (Latin Carolus Magn

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 19 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024

/kirɒli/(machine-generated) Hungarian · model-generated

Say it inExplore pronunciation →

Kiraly is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Hungary than in any other country.

  • HUHungary≈1 in 1.5K(inferred from the name graph)
  • RORomania≈1 in 32Kfew records
  • SISlovenia1 in 91K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Hungary (inferred from the name graph)

≈6,300 people, est.

Record sources
129 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)

Hungary, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)Make your nomograph ✦

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)

nickname from kiraly ‘king’, from western Slavic krai (Czech krai), derivative of the personal name Karl ‘Charles’, the name of the Frankish king and Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne (Latin Carolus Magnus).

Cited for this meaning 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Kiraly is found

(measured from records)

Kiraly 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.

Where Kiraly is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
HU Hungary#118≈6,300 est.≈1 in 1.5K18KKiraly104
US United States—1,0141 in 328K1KKiraly129
RO Romania—≈590 est.≈1 in 32K—Kiraly31
GB United Kingdom—≈180 est.≈1 in 388K—Kiraly43
CA Canada—≈170 est.≈1 in 251K—Kiraly28
CZ Czechia—921 in 116K92Kiraly16
CH Switzerland—691 in 122K69Kiraly14
SI Slovenia—231 in 91K23—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: Nyilvántartó — Top-100 birth surnames in population (2020–2025); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; MVČR — living population register 2017; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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 names spelled this way

(inferred from the name graph)

Kiraly is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada

    Languages: English, German

    Also written Király, Kiràly

  • Swahili surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Romania, Canada, United Kingdom

    Also written Király

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Király, Kiràly

  • Croatian surname9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Croatia, Serbia

    Languages: Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian

    Also written Király, Kiräly

  • Russian surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, United States, Türkiye, Ukraine

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Кирай, Kirai, Киралы, Кираи, Király

42 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Notable people with this name

(measured from records)
19001920194019601980Béla Király, b. 1912Karch Kiraly, b. 1960Gábor Király, b. 1976
  • Béla Királyb. 1912HUHungarian officer, professor, and politician (1912-2009)
  • Karch Kiralyb. 1960USAmerican volleyball player and coach
  • Gábor Királyb. 1976HUHungarian 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)
FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence

(measured from records)

31 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 19 countries.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Kiraly mean, and where does it come from?
nickname from kiraly ‘king’, from western Slavic krai (Czech krai), derivative of the personal name Karl ‘Charles’, the name of the Frankish king and Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne (Latin Carolus Magn… Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Kiraly?
In Hungarian /kirɒli/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Kiraly?
Mondonomo estimates about 6.3 thousand people named Kiraly in Hungary, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kiraly. After it come United States, Romania, United Kingdom and Canada; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Kiraly?
In the United States, the national register counted 1,014 people named Kiraly in 2010, about 1 in 328 thousand residents.
How common is Kiraly compared with other names?
In Hungary, Kiraly is the 118th most common surname of 88,284 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Kiraly?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kiraly

The 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, “Kiraly” — the 118th most common surname in Hungary. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Kiraly parses inside a full name →