Kim

• IPA^(key): /kɪm/, [kʰɪm]

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪm

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

Kim (plural Kims)

1. A unisex given name.
   1. A male given name transferred from the surname.
      • 1900 December – 1901 October, Rudyard Kipling, chapter I, in Kim (Macmillan’s Colonial Library; no. 414), London: Macmillan and Co., published 1901, →OCLC, page 1:

        The half-caste woman who looked after him (she smoked opium, and pretended to keep a second-hand furniture shop by the square where the cheap cabs wait) told the missionaries that she was Kim’s mother’s sister; but his mother had been nursemaid in a colonel's family and had married Kimball O’Hara, a young color-sergeant of the Mavericks, an Irish regiment.

      Kim McCone ― (name of an Irish linguist)

   2. A female given name transferred from the surname, of 1940s and later usage.
      • 1926, Edna Ferber, Show Boat, Doubleday, Page & Co, page 1:

        Bizarre as was the name she bore, Kim Ravenal always said she was thankful it had been no worse. […] It is no secret that the absurd monosyllable which comprises her given name is made up of the first letters of three states — Kentucky, Illinois, and Missouri — in all of which she was, incredibly enough, born.

      • 1991, Don DeLillo, Mao II, Viking, →ISBN, page 16:

        It will take some getting used to, a husband named Kim. She has known girls named Kim since she was a squirt in a sunsuit. Quite a few really. Kimberleys and plain Kims.

      • 2015 September 9, Todd Leopold, “Band unhappy with use of ‘Eye of the Tiger’ for Kim Davis”, in CNN‎^[1]:

        The use of “Eye of the Tiger” at a rally for Kentucky clerk Kim Davis has Survivor’s Jim Peterik “risin’ up to the challenge” – and threatening action.

• Kim, novel by Rudyard Kipling.

From Korean 김 (金) (gim).

• Gim

Kim (plural Kims)

1. A surname from Korean
   • 2020 February 16, Justin McCurry, Nemo Kim, “Parasite: how Oscar triumph has exposed South Korea’s social divide”, in The Observer‎^[2]:

     Centring on the tension between the Kims, a basement-dwelling family of “dirt spoons” in Seoul, and the Parks, a family at the opposite end of the social spectrum, Parasite’s plot is predicated on the widening gap between the haves and the have nots in Asia’s fourth-biggest economy.

• According to the 2010 United States Census, Kim is the 77^th most common surname in the United States, belonging to 262,352 individuals. Kim is most common among Asian/Pacific Islander (94.47%) individuals.

Short form of Joakim.

Kim

1. a male given name from Hebrew

• [3] Danskernes Navne, based on CPR data: 34 878 males with the given name Kim have been registered in Denmark between about 1890 (=the population alive in 1967) and January 2005, with the frequency peak in the 1960s. Accessed on 19 June 2011.

Borrowed from English Kim.

• IPA^(key): /kɪm/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: Kim
• Rhymes: -ɪm
• Homophone: kim

Kim f or m

1. a unisex given name from English

• mik

From Danish Kim.

• IPA^(key): /ˈkim/, [ˈk̟im]
• Rhymes: -im
• Syllabification^(key): Kim
• Hyphenation^(key): Kim

Kim

1. a male given name

• Kim is the 130^th most common male given name in Finland, belonging to 4,902 male individuals (and as a middle name to 639 more), and also is the 1099^th (tied with 1 other name) most common female given name in Finland, belonging to 133 female individuals (and as a middle name to 168 more), according to February 2023 data from the Digital and Population Data Services Agency of Finland.

• Audio:

  (file)

Kim

1. a diminutive of the male given name Joachim, from Hebrew
2. a female given name from English, of recent usage

Short form of Joakim.

Kim

1. a male given name from Hebrew

Kim c (genitive Kims)

1. a male given name from Hebrew, shortened from Joakim
2. a female given name from English, of recent usage

Sino-Vietnamese word from 金 (“gold”).

• (Hà Nội) IPA^(key): [kim˧˧]
• (Huế) IPA^(key): [kim˧˧]
• (Saigon) IPA^(key): [kim˧˧]
• Homophone: kim

Kim

1. (historical) the Jin dynasty (1115–1234 C.E.)
2. a surname from Chinese
3. a female given name from Chinese

• kim