Kim

• IPA^(key): /kɪm/

  • 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 561617680, 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.

From Korean 김 (gim).

• Gim

Kim (plural Kims)

1. A surname from Korean, the English form of a surname very common in Korea. (김 (Gim), hanja: 金), the most common Korean surname.
   • 2020 February 16, Justin McCurry, Nemo Kim, “Parasite: how Oscar triumph has exposed South Korea’s social divide”, in The Observer‎:

     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.

Short form of Joakim.

Kim

1. a male given name from Hebrew

• 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

• 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˧˧]
• (Hồ Chí Minh City) IPA^(key): [kim˧˧]
• Homophone: kim

Kim

1. a surname from Chinese
2. a female given name from Chinese

• kim