Key
loc · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Key is a name, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. It appears chiefly in English and Swahili, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: An object designed to open and close a lock.
- USUnited States1 in 664K◐
- BSBahamas1 in 12K
- KYCayman Islands1 in 23K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈799 ●
- Sources
- 410 ●
- 1 in 67K ◐
across 7 countries
322K records
Official registry-verified
Sweden
Meaning & origin●
An object designed to open and close a lock.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 501 | 271K rec. | 1 in 664K | 34K | Key | 410 |
| GB United Kingdom | 481 | 17K rec. | — | — | Key | 144 |
| SE Sweden | 152 | 110 rec. | 1 in 67K | 152 | — | 27 |
| BS Bahamas | 122 | 187 rec. | — | — | Key | 16 |
| BR Brazil | 80△ | 3 rec. | 1 in 2.6M | 80 | — | 3 |
| RU Russia | 68 | 688 rec. | — | — | Key | 34 |
| CR Costa Rica | 31 | 0 rec. | 1 in 164K | 31 | — | 1 |
| NL Netherlands | 28 | 330 rec. | 1 in 617K | 28 | — | 31 |
| CA Canada | 9 | 4K rec. | — | — | Key | 98 |
| FI Finland | 5 | 102 rec. | 1 in 1.1M | 36 | — | 7 |
| AR Argentina | 5 | 0 rec. | — | 30 | Key | 1 |
| KY Cayman Islands | 5 | 25 rec. | — | — | Key | 3 |
Roughly 501 people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 664K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English538K53%
- Swahili174K17%
- Spanish1181%
- Hindi921%
- Chinese911%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 538,043 | 53% |
| Swahili | 173,724 | 17% |
| Spanish | 118 | 1% |
| Hindi | 92 | 1% |
| Chinese | 91 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Key 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 English, different form of Kay
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In English, , jigi, ju, jiwi; plu., def. st:, jiwisia ; also je- wisia
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
reduced form of McKay.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Khmer, to embezzle, to steal, to cheat. (id.) cm
as a wordHeadley, Cambodian-English Dictionary, Volume I (ក-ភ)
In Chinese, to superimpose (an image, typically that of a person) onto another image
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.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1914 | 5 |
| 1917 | 5 |
| 1948 | 5 |
| 1951 | 5 |
| 1960 | 6 |
| 1961 | 6 |
| 1970 | 5 |
| 1973 | 7 |
| 1977 | 6 |
| 1978 | 6 |
| 1984 | 5 |
| 1987 | 5 |
| 1989 | 6 |
| 1990 | 6 |
| 1993 | 12 |
| 1995 | 5 |
| 1996 | 7 |
| 1997 | 8 |
| 1998 | 7 |
| 1999 | 7 |
| 2003 | 6 |
| 2004 | 6 |
| 2007 | 5 |
| 2012 | 5 |
| 2014 | 5 |
| 2017 | 5 |
| 2023 | 8 |
| 2024 | 7 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 28 years between 1914–2024. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Francis Scott Keyb. 1779USAmerican lawyer and poet who wrote The Star-Spangled Banner (1779-1843)
- Ellen Keyb. 1849SESwedish writer (1849-1926)
- Key Pittmanb. 1872USAmerican politician (1872-1940)
- Francis Scott Fitzgeraldb. 1896USnot in their usual nameAmerican writer (1896–1940)
- Alexander Keyb. 1904USAmerican writer (1904-1979)
- John Keyb. 1961NZPrime Minister of New Zealand from 2008 to 2016
- Keegan-Michael Keyb. 1971USAmerican actor and comedian
- James Keyb. 1972GBBritish engineer
- Tim Keyb. 1976GBBritish actor and comedian
- Ki Sung-yuengb. 1989KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean association football player
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●
Attested in 49 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 34K | #1,037 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 32K | #999 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 32K | #1,083 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 501 | #14,005 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 349 | #14,005 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 152 | #6,408 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 116 | #56,623 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 111 | #6,655 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 90 | #29,709 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 90 | #29,517 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 85 | #31,753 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 80 | — |
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 2026-09-12 data build · 186 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Key?
- We estimate roughly 799 people bear Key (counting its spellings and scripts) across 7 countries in our records.
- In which country does Key have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 501 people bear Key in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled key.
- What does the name Key mean?
- Recorded meaning: An object designed to open and close a lock.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/keyThe 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. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
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, “Key”. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.