Keys
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Keys is a surname, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is the 83rd most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: (i) different form of Kay; (ii) person from Guise, Picardy; (iii) from Irish Gaelic Mac Aodha.
- GBUnited Kingdom1 in 486◐
- IEIreland1 in 580
- NZNew Zealand1 in 593
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈366K ●
- #441 ●
- 3 ●
- Sources
- 572 ●
- 1 in 187 ◐
across 9 countries
of 16M given names
recorded for this name
6.3M records
Official registry-verified
Croatia
Spellings & scripts●
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Keith in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 20 more and Koti in IN India.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin●
(i) different form of Kay; (ii) person from Guise, Picardy; (iii) from Irish Gaelic Mac Aodha
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 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 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | #83 | 427,337 | 376K rec. | — | 13 | Keith | 270 |
| US United States | #99 | 328,332 | 5.2M rec. | 1 in 1K | 328K | Keith | 572 |
| AU Australia | #166 | 142,877 | 132K rec. | — | 75 | Keith | 265 |
| CA Canada | #113 | 113,513 | 115K rec. | — | 3 | Keith | 227 |
| IN India | — | 37,260 | 54K rec. | — | 17K | Koti | 119 |
| PH Philippines | #807 | 26,139 | 22K rec. | — | — | Keith | 134 |
| IT Italy | #337 | 24,826 | 27K rec. | — | 1 | Keith | 73 |
| HR Croatia | — | 22,615△ | 2 rec. | 1 in 187 | 23K | — | 1 |
| DE Germany | #694 | 19,064 | 20K rec. | — | 1 | Keith | 138 |
| ZA South Africa | #171 | 16,722 | 17K rec. | — | — | Keith | 138 |
| IE Ireland | #85 | 16,129 | 14K rec. | — | 6 | Keith | 149 |
| NZ New Zealand | #44 | 14,368 | 13K rec. | — | 10 | Keith | 125 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English171K84%
- Spanish6.5K3%
- 5K2%
- Welsh2.7K1%
- Chinese1.8K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 171,448 | 84% |
| Spanish | 6,470 | 3% |
| 5,039 | 2% | |
| Welsh | 2,724 | 1% |
| Chinese | 1,754 | 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●
Keys is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swedish, indefinite plural of key
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●
- Clement Melville Keysb. 1876CAfinancier, known for early development of commercial aviation businesses in the United States
- Ancel Keysb. 1904USAmerican nutritionist (1904-2004)
- Bobby Keysb. 1943USAmerican saxophonist (1943-2014)
- Richard Keysb. 1957GBBritish television sports presenter (born 1957)
- George Keysb. 1959NZNew Zealand rower
- Randolph Keysb. 1966USAmerican basketball player (born 1966)
- Amy Keysb. 1967USAmerican singer-songwriter
- Isaac Keysb. 1978USAmerican gridiron football player and actor (born 1978)
- Anetta Keysb. 1983CZpornographic performer (b. 1983)
- Madison Keysb. 1995USUS American tennis 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 22 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 19K | #1,900 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 19K | #1,894 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 18K | #1,860 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 24 | #38,647 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 20 | #85,486 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 20 | #83,413 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 6 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 6 | #180,503 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 6 | #51,083 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 6 | #56,175 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 5 | #101,952 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 5 | #98,246 |
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 · 27 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Keys?
- We estimate roughly 366 thousand people bear Keys (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
- In which country does Keys have the most bearers?
- Keys is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled keith.
- Where is Keys most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Keys is densest in Croatia — about 1 in 187 people — even though United Kingdom holds more of our records for it.
- How common is Keys compared with other names?
- In the United Kingdom, Keys is the 83rd most common given name of 369,273 given names recorded there.
- What does the name Keys mean?
- Recorded meaning: (i) different form of Kay; (ii) person from Guise, Picardy; (iii) from Irish Gaelic Mac Aodha
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/keysThe 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, “Keys” — the 83rd most common given name in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.