Kér
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Kér is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: * As an English and Scottish surname, variant of Carr. * As a Hungarian surname, from Kér, name of a medieval Magyar tribe. * As a Chinese surname, romanized from 寇 (kòu); compare Kou.
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 12K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 49K
- USUnited States1 in 537K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 230 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 12K (inferred from the name graph)
≈67,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Malaysia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Ker in US United States, GB United Kingdom, MY Malaysia and 3 more and Kêr in DZ Algeria.
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)
* As an English and Scottish surname, variant of Carr. * As a Hungarian surname, from Kér, name of a medieval Magyar tribe. * As a Chinese surname, romanized from 寇 (kòu); compare Kou. * Also as a Chinese surname, from 柯 (kē) (compare Ke) and 葛 (compare Ge). * Also as a Chinese surname, from 郭 (guō), compare Guo.
Sources 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
- Clauson, An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth-Century Turkish (1972)
- Deshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kér 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 | ≈67,000 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Ker | 11 |
| MY Malaysia | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Ker | 54 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 49K | — | Ker | 121 |
| DZ Algeria | ≈930 est. | ≈1 in 46K | — | Kêr | 11 |
| IT Italy | ≈870 est. | ≈1 in 72K | — | Ker | 8 |
| US United States | 619 | 1 in 537K | 816 | Ker | 230 |
| SG Singapore | ≈270 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Ker | 55 |
| CZ Czechia | ≈240 est. | ≈1 in 44K | 10 | — | — |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; MVČR — living population register 2017. 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)
Kér 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 Hungarian, to ask (for), to make a request (the person having -tól/-től and the favor, -t/-ot/-at/-et/-öt, or the person having -t/-ot/-at/-et/-öt and the favor, -ra/-re)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Breton, dear
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.
Evidence(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kér mean, and where does it come from?
- * As an English and Scottish surname, variant of Carr. * As a Hungarian surname, from Kér, name of a medieval Magyar tribe. * As a Chinese surname, romanized from 寇 (kòu); compare Kou. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and 4 other sources.
- In which country does Kér have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 67 thousand people named Kér in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ker.
- How common is the name Kér?
- In the United States, the national register counted 619 people named Kér in 2020, about 1 in 537 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kér?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/k%C3%A9rThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Kér”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.