King
453,539 people in America carry this name — ranked #36 of 777.
A surname with a trade, a place or a father behind it.
Say it KIHNG
1 syllable · the capitals are the stressed part
Phonetic transcription
K IH1 NG — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.
-
People counted 453,539 2020 Census
-
Rank #36 Common
-
Per 100,000 151.7 about 1 in 731 people
The meaning and origin of King
Reads literally as “the primary sense is a head or leader”.
A name taken from an office someone held.
Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.
The likeliest full names
- Michael King ≈ 4,800 people
- John King ≈ 4,300 people
- James King ≈ 4,100 people
- David King ≈ 3,800 people
- Robert King ≈ 3,800 people
- William King ≈ 3,100 people
- Mary King ≈ 2,400 people
- Maria King ≈ 2,300 people
The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.
Spellings of King
King is how 94% of them spell it — 483,719 people answer to the sound.
- King 94%
- Kinney 6.2%
Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.
Names about as common
The nearest entries above and below by number of people.
Same syllables and stress as King
Ends on the same sound
- Jones 1,383,250
- Moore 696,384
- White 636,798
- Scott 421,499
- Hill 419,076
- Cook 290,386
- Bell 267,025
- Doe 262,774
- Ward 255,767
- Brooks 244,116
Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.
Try it Name Matcher
Enter a surname and hear which first names sit well with it.
Where this page gets its numbers
- Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
- Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
- Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.
Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers