Definition of "Kim"

A unisex given name

1. A male given name transferred from the surname.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • 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.

     1900 December – 1901 October, Rudyard Kipling, chapter I, in Kim (Macmillan’s Colonial Library; no. 414), London: Macmillan and Co., published 1901, page 1

2. A female given name transferred from the surname, of 1940s and later usage.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • 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.

     1926, Edna Ferber, Show Boat, Doubleday, Page & Co, page 1

   • 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.

     1991, Don DeLillo, Mao II, Viking, page 16

A surname from Korean, the English form of a surname very common in Korea. (김 (Gim), hanja: 金), the most common Korean surname.  quotations  examples