Kong
loc · Latin script
Meaning: internal tribute, tax-in-kind paid in Koryo and early Choson periods
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Kong is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In South Korea it is the 49th most common surname.
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 356(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 8.6K
- USUnited States1 in 23K
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 Kong 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)
- Sources
- 439 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 356 (inferred from the name graph)
≈590,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Hong Kong, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled 공 in KR South Korea and Cong in MY Malaysia.
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)
internal tribute, tax-in-kind paid in Koryo and early Choson periods
Sources 1
- Korea - A Historical and Cultural Dictionary
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kong 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 | — | ≈590,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Kong | 93 |
| KR South Korea | #49 | 92,340as 공 | 1 in 561 | 98K | 공 | 126 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈40,000 est. | ≈1 in 811 | — | Cong | 126 |
| HK Hong Kong | — | ≈20,000 est. | ≈1 in 356 | — | Kong | 111 |
| US United States | — | 14,165 | 1 in 23K | 15K | Kong | 439 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.6K | 1 | Kong | 187 |
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: KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants; KOSIS — 2015 census surnames; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–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)
Kong 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 Korean, Cheng Tang was the first king of the Shang dynasty, founded in 1766 BC. Although now known as Cheng Tang, his surname was Zi, and he had a ‘style name’ (given around age 20) of Tai Yi. Later descendants of his combined the character for Zi with the character for Yi, creating the character for Kong, and adopted the latter as their surname. The Con in ‘Confucius’ represents this surname.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Korean, nickname from Danish kong ‘king’, or occupational nickname for someone in the service ofthe king.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Chinese, nonstandard spelling of kōng
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In wuu, Carry (two men with a pole)
as a wordA Vocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect
In wuu, Justly
as a wordAn English-Chinese Vocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect
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)
- Zisib. 483not in their usual nameChinese philosopher, grandson of Confucius (c. 481–402 BCE)
- Confuciusb. 552CNnot in their usual name5th-century BCE Chinese philosopher and politician
- H. H. Kungb. 1881TWnot in their usual nameChinese banker and politician (1881–1967)
- Jiang Qingb. 1914CNnot in their usual nameChinese political figure and wife of Mao Zedong (1914–1991)
- Jiang Zeminb. 1926CNnot in their usual nameformer General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (1926–2022)
- Kong Linghuib. 1975CNChinese table tennis player
- Gong Yoob. 1979KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actor Beautiful
- Gong Hyo-jinb. 1980KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actress (born 1980)
- William Hungb. 1982USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer
- Minzyb. 1994KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean singer, rapper and dancer (born 1994)
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 45 sources across 25 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| KR South Korea | KOSIS — 2015 census surnames | 2015 | 98K | #47 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 15K | #2,293 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 14K | #2,551 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 11K | #3,005 |
| 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 Kong mean, and where does it come from?
- internal tribute, tax-in-kind paid in Koryo and early Choson periods Recorded by Korea - A Historical and Cultural Dictionary.
- In which country does Kong have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 588 thousand people named Kong in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kong.
- How common is the name Kong?
- In the United States, the national register counted 14,165 people named Kong in 2010, about 1 in 23 thousand residents.
- How common is Kong compared with other names?
- In South Korea, Kong is the 49th most common surname of 14,133 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kong?
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/kongThe 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, “Kong” — the 49th most common surname in South Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.