Kooi
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Middle Dutch kooye ‘decoy’, ‘cage’, ‘fold’, a metonymic occupational name for a maker of cages or decoys or for someone who caught ducks by decoying them
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkui/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kooi is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Malaysia than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 10K(measured from records)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 12K
- USUnited States1 in 517K
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
- 202 (measured from records)
- 1 in 10K (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,700 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Middle Dutch kooye ‘decoy’, ‘cage’, ‘fold’, a metonymic occupational name for a maker of cages or decoys or for someone who caught ducks by decoying them.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kooi 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 | — | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Kooi | 39 |
| NL Netherlands | #520 | 1,671 | 1 in 10K | 1.7K | Kooi | 83 |
| US United States | — | 644 | 1 in 517K | 663 | Kooi | 202 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 724K | — | Kooi | 34 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 57K | — | Kooi | 25 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈91 est. | ≈1 in 412K | — | Kooi | 38 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈69 est. | ≈1 in 372K | — | Kooi | 43 |
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 2020; 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Kooi is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Dutch, cage
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, Wohnstättenname zu Koy/Kooi; univerbierte Form. 11 Belege; zeigt niederländische Lautform.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
In dag, exclamation for fear KO
as a wordDagbani Dictionary CD
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)
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)
Attested in 13 sources across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 1.7K | #826 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 663 | #36,342 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 644 | #35,016 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 527 | #39,304 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Kooi mean, and where does it come from?
- from Middle Dutch kooye ‘decoy’, ‘cage’, ‘fold’, a metonymic occupational name for a maker of cages or decoys or for someone who caught ducks by decoying them. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kooi?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkui/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kooi have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.7 thousand people named Kooi in Malaysia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kooi.
- Where is Kooi most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kooi is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 10 thousand people — even though Malaysia holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Kooi?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 1,671 people named Kooi in 2007, about 1 in 10 thousand residents.
- How common is Kooi compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Kooi is the 520th most common surname of 284,143 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kooi?
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/kooiThe 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, “Kooi” — the 520th most common surname in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.