King
- Pronunciation
- [King]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- King's Field. King Is One Of Several Titles Occasionally Used As Given Names.
- Origin
- English
About the Name King
King is an English word and surname, both derived from the Old English cyning meaning "king" — the head of a tribal-to-medieval-feudal political unit. The surname identified medieval English families either descended from or working for actual royalty (including stewards, court servants, or families granted land by a king). The surname appears in English records continuously since at least the 12th century.
The name's modern transition to first-name use is essentially a 21st-century American phenomenon. The name has been used predominantly in African-American naming communities, where the in-built register of nobility, dignity, and aspiration resonates particularly strongly. The cultural reach extends through hip-hop and contemporary urban naming patterns where King has been adopted as both a first name and as a stylized self-given title.
Notable bearers include the surname-as-iconic-name Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968), the American Baptist minister and civil-rights leader whose 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech and 1964 Nobel Peace Prize made his surname one of the most-recognized names in 20th-century American moral history. King climbed from outside the US top 500 in 2010 to the US top 200 boys' rank by 2018 and the top 100 by 2022. Notable contemporary bearers include rapper King Combs (son of Sean "Diddy" Combs), American boxer Don King, and various 21st-century reality-TV personalities. The name's appeal sits in two contemporary American naming preferences: the in-built aspirational-noble register, and the African-American naming tradition of using powerful word-and-title names for sons. One short syllable, hard consonants, distinctly modern. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — King-y and the rare Kings each occasionally appear; the related Kingston (see separate entry) is sometimes used as the longer formal form. There are no significant international variants since the name's first-name use is essentially modern American.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About King
US Popularity History (2006–2025)
Annual US births named King by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2017 with 2,694 boys named King (boy rank #147 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #405 for boys (786 US births). That's 258 places below its 2017 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is King Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For King the strongest states are District of Columbia, Georgia, South Carolina.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | District of Columbia | #76 | 128 |
| 2 | Georgia | #103 | 1,258 |
| 3 | South Carolina | #120 | 479 |
| 4 | Delaware | #134 | 76 |
| 5 | Florida | #139 | 1,642 |
| 6 | Maryland | #143 | 478 |
| 7 | Louisiana | #143 | 450 |
| 8 | Mississippi | #147 | 274 |
| 9 | North Carolina | #152 | 853 |
| 10 | Nevada | #164 | 270 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Utah | #570 | 59 |
| 2 | Colorado | #401 | 159 |
| 3 | Oregon | #399 | 87 |
| 4 | Washington | #387 | 203 |
| 5 | Nebraska | #377 | 52 |
| 6 | Iowa | #346 | 94 |
| 7 | Kansas | #336 | 96 |
| 8 | Massachusetts | #315 | 179 |
| 9 | Kentucky | #312 | 156 |
| 10 | Minnesota | #312 | 192 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for King in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Famous People Named King
2 notable figures from history and culture who share the name King.
- King Hussein of Jordan — World Leader (1935)
- King James I was the king of England and Ireland.
Looking for names like King?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare King to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for King against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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