Kobayashi
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ‘small forest’; one of the ten most common Japanese surnames, found especially in central Japan; the different families bearing this name are not all related
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 17 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Kobayashi is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Japan than in any other country, where it is the 29th most common surname.
- JPJapan≈1 in 290(inferred from the name graph)
- FIFinland1 in 48K
- UYUruguay1 in 63K
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.
- Japan (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 236 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 291 (inferred from the name graph)
≈430,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Japan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)‘small forest’; one of the ten most common Japanese surnames, found especially in central Japan; the different families bearing this name are not all related. The name is also found in the Ryukyu Islands.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Kobayashi is found
(measured from records)Kobayashi 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 | #29 | ≈430,000 est. | ≈1 in 291 | — | Kobayashi | 205 |
| US United States | — | 3,845 | 1 in 87K | 3.8K | Kobayashi | 236 |
| BR Brazil | — | 2,918 | 1 in 73K | 2.9K | — | 1 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈570 est. | ≈1 in 72K | — | Kobayashi | 50 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈560 est. | ≈1 in 206K | — | Kobayashi | 26 |
| FI Finland | — | 115 | 1 in 48K | 115 | — | 5 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈85 est. | ≈1 in 71K | — | Kobayashi | 32 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 54 | 1 in 63K | 54 | — | — |
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; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Kobayashi Issab. 1763JPJapanese writer (1763-1828)
- Makoto Kobayashib. 1944JPJapanese theoretical physicist (1944–)
- Kaoru Kobayashib. 1951JPJapanese actor
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)Evidence
(measured from records)29 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 17 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kobayashi mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘small forest’; one of the ten most common Japanese surnames, found especially in central Japan; the different families bearing this name are not all related. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Kobayashi?
- Mondonomo estimates about 426 thousand people named Kobayashi in Japan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kobayashi. After it come United States, Brazil, Canada and Philippines; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Kobayashi?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,845 people named Kobayashi in 2010, about 1 in 87 thousand residents.
- How common is Kobayashi compared with other names?
- In Japan, Kobayashi is the 29th most common surname of 142,159 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kobayashi?
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/kobayashiThe 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, “Kobayashi” — the 29th most common surname in Japan. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.