kim

1. alternativeuncountableAlternative form of gim (“edible seaweed”).

plural Kims

1. A unisex given name.
   1. A male given name transferred from the surname.

      1 more example

      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, London: Macmillan and Co., published 1901, →OCLC, page 1

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

      The use of “Eye of the Tiger” at a rally for Kentucky clerk Kim Davis has Survivor’s Jim Peterik “risin’ up to the challenge” – and threatening action.

      2015 September 9, Todd Leopold, “Band unhappy with use of ‘Eye of the Tiger’ for Kim Davis”, in CNN, archived from the original on 27 May 2023

      2 more examples

      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, →ISBN, page 16

plural Kims

1. A surname from Korean.

   1 more example

   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. […] “My husband and I thought it was such an honour for our shop to appear in Parasite,” its 72-year-old owner, Kim Kyung-soon, says.

   2020 February 16, Justin McCurry, Nemo Kim, “Parasite: how Oscar triumph has exposed South Korea’s social divide”, in The Observer, archived from the original on 10 Apr 2022

1. An Mbum language of southern Chad.