Kim

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Kim boys named Kim

Girls and boys called Kim

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Kim crossed from boys to girls in 1955, having already crossed in 1932, and has stayed there for 71 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 94% girls, and in 2025 it was 85%.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 95 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.

By the numbers

Total US births

214,768

Estimated living today

181,000

Median age today

63

Peak year

1960

Best rank

34th

Rank in 2025

4,172nd

First recorded

1912

Girls / boys

179,817 / 34,951

How old the living Kims are

born that year still alive today

Of the 214,768 babies given the name since 1912, about 181,000 are alive — 84 in every hundred. Roughly 1,100 of them are children and 74,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1962 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

and Kimberley as a male name, and of Kimberley and Kimberly as a female name.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Kims

• Kim Jong-un (born 1984)Supreme Leader of North Korea since 2011
• Kim Il-sung (1912–1994)Supreme Leader of North Korea from 1948 to 1994
• Kim Jong-il (1941–2011)Supreme Leader of North Korea from 1994 to 2011
• Kim Kardashian (born 1980)American media personality, businesswoman, model and actress
• Kim Basinger (born 1953)American actress
• Kim Dae-jung (1924–2009)8th President of the Republic of Korea
• Kim Clijsters (born 1983)Belgian tennis player
• Kim Young-sam (1927–2015)President of South Korea from 1993 to 1998

People named Kim with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Kim is most common

• NY22,473
• CA19,905
• PA11,752
• MI11,643
• OH10,932
• IL10,453
• WI9,064
• TX8,312
• NJ7,596
• IN5,704

Relative to how many babies each state records, Kim is most concentrated in Wisconsin (2.2×), Montana (1.7×), North Dakota (1.7×), South Dakota (1.6×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1960

The most popular girls’ names the year Kim peaked:

• Mary
• Susan
• Linda
• Karen
• Donna
• Lisa

All the names of 1960

Kim elsewhere

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Kim: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Kim is most concentrated in Schwyz, where 0.17% of children were given it – 60 of them.

Kim: rank by region

In 2016, Kim was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Kim by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Kim among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Kim lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 197 men called Kim and 337 women called Kim were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Men: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 7 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 45 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 13 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 39 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Kimberly
• Kimberley
• Kimberlee
• Kimber
• Kimora
• Kimberli
• Kimberlyn
• Kimberlie
• Kimani
• Kimberely
• Kimball
• Kimi

Kim against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Kim vs Kimberly
• Kim vs Kimberley
• Kim vs Kimberlee
• Kim vs Kimber
• Kim vs Kimora
• Kim vs Kimberli

Compare Kim with a name of your own