Kubo

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in Japanese: ‘sunken ground’; variously written, mostly with characters used phonetically. Found mostly in western Japan, apparently taken from several habitational names

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

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

rarermore common
  • JPJapan≈1 in 1.4K(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 299K
  • EEEstonia≈1 in 70K

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.

Japan (inferred from the name graph)

≈92,000 people, est.

Sources
140 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 1.4K (inferred from the name graph)

Japan, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

‘sunken ground’; variously written, mostly with characters used phonetically. Found mostly in western Japan, apparently taken from several habitational names. Many unrelated families descend from various branches of the Taira, Minamoto, and other great families.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.

How Kubo is read(measured from records)

Kubo is one spelling over 3 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.

  • Japanese62%

    ‘sunken ground’; variously written, mostly with characters used phonetically. Found mostly in western Japan, apparently taken from several habitational names. Many unrelated families descend from various branches of the Taira, Minamoto, and other great families.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

    from a variant of the personal name Kuba, a pet form of Jakub (see Jacob).

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

    Rōmaji transcription of くぼ

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • English20%

    A language spoken in Papua New Guinea.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Portuguese7.9%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Kubo in Portuguese.

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)

Kubo 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 Kubo is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
JP Japan#261≈92,000 est.≈1 in 1.4K—Kubo140
CN China—≈4,700 est.≈1 in 298K—Kubo6
BR Brazil—1,3721 in 154K1.4K——
US United States—1,1121 in 299K1.2KKubo128
KE Kenya—≈440 est.≈1 in 123K1Kubo5
IE Ireland—≈27 est.≈1 in 193K—Kubo2
EE Estonia—≈18 est.≈1 in 70K23—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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Mzalendo Trust "Elections Watch" — 2022 gazetted election winners; the ee-stat-nimed register. 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)

Kubo is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Portuguese surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, United States, Argentina, Mexico

    Languages: Portuguese, Spanish

    Also written Ķubo, Kübö

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Kubō

45 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.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Kubo is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Filipino, hut; shack; shanty (especially a cube-shaped, one-room, rural hut with a nipa or cogon grass roof and bamboo walls)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Esperanto, Cuba (a country, the largest island (based on land area) in the Caribbean)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

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)

1900195020002050Sakae Kubo, b. 1900Ryogo Kubo, b. 1920Wataru Kubo, b. 1929Akira Kubo, b. 1936Chiemi Eri, b. 1937Hitomi Kubo, b. 1969Sayuri Kubo, b. 1978Yuya Kubo, b. 1980Yuya Kubo, b. 1993Takefusa Kubo, b. 2001

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 26 sources across 14 countries.

Official registers attesting Kubo
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—1.4K#6,903
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020001.2K#20,642
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.2K#22,608
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.1K#22,989
EE EstoniaStatistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed)—23#4,877
EE EstoniaStatistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed)—14#7,886
KE KenyaMzalendo Trust "Elections Watch" — 2022 gazetted election winners20221#682
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 4

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • 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 Kubo mean, and where does it come from?
‘sunken ground’; variously written, mostly with characters used phonetically. Found mostly in western Japan, apparently taken from several habitational names. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How common is the name Kubo?
In Brazil, the national register counted 1,372 people named Kubo, about 1 in 154 thousand residents.
How common is Kubo compared with other names?
In Japan, Kubo is the 261st most common surname of 142,159 surnames recorded there.
In which country does Kubo have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 92 thousand people named Kubo in Japan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kubo.

What do you want to know about Kubo?

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

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, “Kubo” — the 261st most common surname in Japan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Kubo parses inside a full name →