kim

/kɪm/

kim is the alternative form of gim.

Meaning of gim

gim (uncountable)

Kim (plural Kims)

A male given name transferred from the surname.
- 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...1900 December – 1901 October, Rudyard Kipling, chapter I, in Kim, London: Macmillan and Co., published 1901, →OCLC, page 1
A female given name transferred from the surname, of 1940s and later usage.
- 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...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

Kim (plural Kims)

A surname from Korean.
- 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...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

Kim

plural	Kims

Clipping of Kimball and Kimberley as a male name, and of Kimberley and Kimberly as a female name.

From Korean 김(金) (Gim).

35 more rhymesFewer rhymes

What does kim mean?: Kim means a male given name transferred from the surname.
What is kim the alternative form of?: Kim is the alternative form of gim.
What part of speech is kim?: Kim is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce kim?: Kim is pronounced /kɪm/.

Adapted from Wiktionary: kim (page history and authors); Kim (page history and authors); gim (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Kim.wav.

Cite this entry: “kim.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kim. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.