Këm
surname · Latin script
Këm is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Khmer កឹម (kəm).
- GYGuyana1 in 47K(measured from records)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 53Kfew records
- PGPapua New Guinea≈1 in 92K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- India (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 255 (measured from records)
- 1 in 47K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,200 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Kem in US United States, PH Philippines, MY Malaysia and 2 more.
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)From Khmer កឹម (kəm).
Cited for this meaning 1
Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Këm 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 1.2M | 51 | Kem | 16 |
| US United States | 1,163 | 1 in 286K | 955 | Kem | 255 |
| PH Philippines | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 114K | — | Kem | 41 |
| MY Malaysia | ≈670 est. | ≈1 in 53K | — | Kem | 21 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈520 est. | ≈1 in 448K | — | Kem | 24 |
| PG Papua New Guinea | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 92K | 3 | — | 1 |
| GY Guyana | 16 | 1 in 47K | 16 | — | 3 |
| GD Grenada | ≈1 est. | ≈1 in 109K | 12 | — | 1 |
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; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025; PNG Election Results Database — candidate names (1972–2022). 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).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Këm mean, and where does it come from?
- From Khmer កឹម (kəm). Recorded by Wiktionary.
- Which countries have the most people named Këm?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.2 thousand people named Këm in India, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kem. After it come United States, Philippines, Malaysia and Nigeria; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Këm most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Këm is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 47 thousand people — even though India holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Këm?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,163 people named Këm in 2020, about 1 in 286 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Këm?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/k%C3%ABmThe 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, “Këm”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.