Koske

surname · Swahili · Latin script

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

Koske is a surname, most frequently recorded in Kenya. It appears chiefly in Swahili and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from a diminutive of western Slavic kosa ‘scythe’ (see Kosa) or kos ‘blackbird’ (see Kos).

rarermore common
  • KEKenya1 in 7.2K◐
  • USUnited States1 in 1.1M
  • SGSingapore1 in 1.9M

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈370 ●

across 4 countries

Sources
73 ●

1.6K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 1.1M ◐

United States

Meaning & origin●

from a diminutive of western Slavic kosa ‘scythe’ (see Kosa) or kos ‘blackbird’ (see Kos).

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Koske is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
KE Kenya#7005,303530 rec.——Koske30
US United States—298922 rec.1 in 1.1M314Koske73
BR Brazil—62△5 rec.1 in 3.4M62Koske11
AR Argentina—2322 rec.——Koske11
GB United Kingdom—2222 rec.——Koske4
CO Colombia—2020 rec.——Koske2
CA Canada—1416 rec.——Koske2
NL Netherlands—1010 rec.——Koske2
IN India—811 rec.1 in 166M8Koske9
MX Mexico—88 rec.——Koske4
PH Philippines—67 rec.——Koske2
IT Italy—66 rec.——Koske1

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • Swahili6.4K65%
  • English2.2K22%
  • German7317%
  • Spanish1301%
  • Portuguese631%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Swahili6,36065%
English2,17522%
German7317%
Spanish1301%
Portuguese631%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Koske is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname3.2K records spelled Koske7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Australia

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Koeske, Köske

  • Japanese surname134 records spelled Koske2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Japan

    Also written Ko-Ske

  • French surname31 records spelled Koske2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States

    Also written Koské

  • Hindi surname24 records spelled Koske5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States

    Also written Koşke, Köşke

27 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.

Notable people with this name●

  • KoskeUSAmerican mycologist

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 12 sources across 5 countries.

Official registers attesting Koske
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020314#67,683
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000299#62,577
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010298#66,371
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—62#90,038
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—8#136,045
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—6#128,791
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20262—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—2#348,462
UY UruguayMontevideo Open Data — Nombres por año y sexo (1940–2012)20081—
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames (Census 2010 + voter-file supplement)———

Reference works 2

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • 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 · 10 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Koske?
We estimate roughly 370 people bear Koske (counting its spellings and scripts) across 4 countries in our records.
In which country does Koske have the most bearers?
Koske is most frequently recorded in Kenya, where it is most often spelled koske.
How common is Koske compared with other names?
In Kenya, Koske is the 700th most common surname of 163,280 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Koske mean?
Recorded meaning: from a diminutive of western Slavic kosa ‘scythe’ (see Kosa) or kos ‘blackbird’ (see Kos).
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/koske

The 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

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

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, “Koske” — the 700th most common surname in Kenya. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Koske parses inside a full name →