Kawaii
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Kawaii is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Japan than in any other country. In English, recorded as Cute, adorable.
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 143K(inferred from the name graph)
- JPJapan≈1 in 198K
- SGSingapore≈1 in 281K
carrying the name, as Mondonomo estimates it from our sources: no national register counts it in these countries. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Japan (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 85 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 143K (inferred from the name graph)
≈640 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Hong Kong, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
How Kawaii is read(measured from records)
Kawaii is one spelling over 5 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English28%
Cute, adorable.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish17%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kawaii in Spanish.
- Japanese14%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kawaii in Japanese.
- Portuguese6.2%
kawaii (cute, in the context of Japanese culture)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Lao6.1%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kawaii in Lao.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kawaii 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JP Japan | ≈640 est. | ≈1 in 198K | — | Kawaii | 14 |
| PH Philippines | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 570K | — | Kawaii | 13 |
| US United States | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 2M | 8 | Kawaii | 85 |
| IT Italy | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 410K | — | Kawaii | 5 |
| MY Malaysia | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 311K | — | Kawaii | 8 |
| HK Hong Kong | ≈51 est. | ≈1 in 143K | — | Kawaii | 8 |
| SG Singapore | ≈22 est. | ≈1 in 281K | — | Kawaii | 6 |
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: SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present). 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)
Attested in 2 sources across 1 country.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 8 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2008 | 7 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2005 | 7 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2011 | 6 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2022 | 5 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2018 | 5 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2017 | 5 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2016 | 5 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2007 | 5 | — |
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kawaii mean?
- In English, Cute, adorable.
- In which country does Kawaii have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 635 people named Kawaii in Japan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kawaii.
- How common is the name Kawaii?
- Mondonomo estimates about 640 people in Japan have Kawaii as their first surname, about 1 in 198 thousand residents. No national register counts it there; the figure is ours, calibrated against the registers that do.
What do you want to know about Kawaii?
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/kawaiiThe 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, “Kawaii”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.