kaLiLi

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/kəʎɪʎi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

kaLiLi is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Tanzania than in any other country. Recorded meaning: kalili, an endemic Hawaiian violet; also ka (“the”) + lili (“jealousy”).

rarermore common
  • TZTanzania≈1 in 53K(inferred from the name graph)
  • KEKenya≈1 in 334K
  • USUnited States1 in 1.6M

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.

Tanzania (inferred from the name graph)

≈1,100 people, est.

Sources
69 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 53K (inferred from the name graph)

Tanzania, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

kalili, an endemic Hawaiian violet; also ka (“the”) + lili (“jealousy”).

Sources 1

Where in the world(measured from records)

kaLiLi 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.

Where kaLiLi is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
TZ Tanzania≈1,100 est.≈1 in 53K—kaLiLi8
US United States2061 in 1.6M206kaLiLi69
KE Kenya≈160 est.≈1 in 334K—kaLiLi4
BR Brazil811 in 2.6M81—1
NG Nigeria≈64 est.≈1 in 3.3M—kaLiLi4

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 — Surname Frequency 2010; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

kaLiLi is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Portuguese surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, United States, Mexico, Guatemala

    Languages: Portuguese, Spanish

    Also written Kalíli, Ḵalīlī

  • Arabic surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, United States, Syria

    Also written Kâlīlį, Ḵalīlī

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Ḵalīlī

29 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.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

kaLiLi 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 Czech, animate masculine plural past active participle of kalit

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Serbo-Croatian, masculine plural active past participle of káliti

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Hawaiian, a female given name from Hawaiian

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In mqs, to stumble and fall

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Bambara, oath

    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(measured from records)

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).

How to address them(machine-generated)

FormalDear Kalili,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 11 sources across 5 countries.

Official registers attesting kaLiLi
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010206#89,753
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020200#97,359
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000159#104,257
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—81#74,062
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 1

  • 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 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name kaLiLi mean, and where does it come from?
kalili, an endemic Hawaiian violet; also ka (“the”) + lili (“jealousy”). Recorded by Wiktionary.
How do you pronounce kaLiLi?
A machine transcription gives /kəʎɪʎi/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does kaLiLi have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 1.1 thousand people named kaLiLi in Tanzania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kaLiLi.
How common is the name kaLiLi?
In the United States, the national register counted 206 people named kaLiLi in 2010, about 1 in 1.6 million residents.

What do you want to know about kaLiLi?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kalili

The 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, “kaLiLi”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how kaLiLi parses inside a full name →