Kym
Feminine
Kym is given to both — 1,297 girls and 173 boys since 1880. See other names given to both
Kym is Kim with the vowel respelled, and Kim is a name with three unrelated lives. It is a clipping of Kimberly, it is the title character of a novel about a boy, and it is the family name of a very large number of people in Korea. None of the three has anything to do with the others.
How old is the name Kym?
Kym first appears in US birth records in 1950 — 75 years ago. The typical Kym alive today was born around 1964, making them about 61 years old. About 1,200 people named Kym are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Kym most popular?
Kym peaked in 1959, reaching #1079 nationally. See the whole 1959 chart.
Where it comes from
From Kimberly to Kym
The story of Kym
Kipling published a novel called Kim at the start of the twentieth century, and his Kim is a boy: an orphaned Irish child running loose in Lahore, who learns the streets, is picked up by an intelligence service, and travels the length of India with a Tibetan lama. The name in the book is short for Kimball, and it was a man's name for a good while afterwards. The woman's name came from a different direction, out of Kimberly, and grew large enough in the middle of the last century to close the male line off almost entirely. The third Kim is unconnected to both: it is the commonest family name in Korea, carried by roughly a fifth of the country, and it is written with a character meaning gold.
Meaningnot established
Not established
The American name is a clipping, and clippings inherit rather than mean. Kimberly is a place name from a South African diamond town, itself named after a British colonial secretary, so the trail ends in a title rather than a meaning. There is no separate sense to give for Kym; the y is a spelling decision and carries nothing.
How the name formed
- Kimberly
- Kim
- Kym
Pronouncing Kym
KIM
One syllable, said exactly as the ordinary spelling. The y is doing what y has always done in English, standing in for a short i, which is a habit that goes back to medieval scribes and not a modern invention.
Nicknames for Kym
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1950
- Most girls named
- 195997 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1079reached in 1959
- Change vs 2002
- +20.0%6 in 2003, from 5
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Kyms among us
people named Kym are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Kym sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- One syllable, impossible to mispronounce, and understood immediately anywhere in the English-speaking world.
- The y gives a very common name a distinct written form without changing anything that has to be said.
- It works for a child of either sex, which the name has done for most of its history.
- The record carries this spelling for boys and girls both, so it signals nothing on a form.
- The i spelling is overwhelmingly commoner and will be written instead of this one almost every time.
- A single-syllable name gives nothing to shorten and nothing to lengthen, which some people find limiting later.
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What they receive
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Kym
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Kyms are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,200 people named Kym are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Kym in 2025?
- Kym is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Kym with classmates?
- Kym will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More K names
The most-given names starting with K, all years combined.
Karen#1279 · Kimberly#302 · Kathleen#1150 · Katherine#186 · Kelly#851 · Kathryn#729 · Kayla#364 · Kathy#3249
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Kym? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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