Kim went to 13,635 American babies in 1960 and to 40 in 2025, so the day falls on a name parents have very nearly stopped giving. Kipling's 1901 hero was a Kimball, not a Kimberly.
National Kim Day circulates through holiday-listing sites and social posts each 11 October, and the Federal Register's index from 1994 onward carries nothing for it. No founder, proclamation or first observance is documented.
National Kim Day lands on a name almost everyone now reads as a short form of Kimberly. Behind the Name puts it the other way round, and says Kim predates Kimberly as a given name.
The American birth record adds something the etymology does not. Kim arrived here as a boys' name, and the turn came in 1955. That year the Social Security Administration's national files list 3,490 boys named Kim against 5,687 girls.
No year since has put the boys back in front. Which Kim someone is now depends mostly on the decade they were born in.
The name on this day begins with a hole in the ground. In 1871 prospectors working a South African hill called Colesberg Kopje struck diamond-bearing rock, and a mining camp went up around it.
The camp needed a name and took one from a title. Britannica records that it was called after John Wodehouse, first Earl of Kimberley, then British colonial secretary. The town of Kimberley was formally created in 1878.
Behind the Name derives the given name Kimberly from that South African city. It puts the name's use for girls in the middle of the twentieth century. Kim was already in English by then, doing a different job.
The boy in Kipling's novel carries a longer name than the title lets on. Published in 1901, Kim follows the orphaned son of an Irish colour-sergeant, and names that father in its opening pages as Kimball O'Hara. Adults in the story address the son the same way.
The birth record backs the etymology up. Social Security's national data first lists Kim in 1912. Five boys carried it that year.
Kimberly does not reach the files until 1933. By then Kim had already been listed in eighteen separate years.
Boys held the majority in those files for eighteen straight years, a run that ended in 1954. Behind the Name credits the name's American popularity to two actresses who took it for the screen, Kim Hunter and Kim Novak. Hunter was born Janet Cole and won an Academy Award in 1952.
National Kim Day sits on that history without adding to it. No founder, proclamation or first observance has been documented for the day. It lives on holiday listing sites and in social posts, and October 11 is the date they carry.
TIMELINE
GOOD TO KNOW
Kim, Kimberly, Kimberley and Kimberlee account for 1,121,402 listed American births between 1880 and 2025. Kimberly alone carries 850,666 of them.
Social Security withholds any name with fewer than five births in a year, to protect privacy. A year with no Kim in the file therefore had fewer than five, not none.
Across the 146 annual files, 165 distinct names start with those three letters. Nineteen of them total exactly five births in the whole series.
In 146 years Kimberlee has never reached five boys in a single year, so it is listed for girls only, in 79 of them. Kimberley clears that bar for boys in 24 years.
The national files list Kim for boys in 108 of their 146 years and for girls in 104. Both lists still carry it in 2025.
WHY THIS DAY MATTERS
13,635 American babies named Kim in 1960. Forty in 2025.
Social Security's files list 13,635 babies of both sexes named Kim in 1960 and 40 in 2025. The day now falls on a name American parents have very nearly stopped giving.
Behind the Name prints Kim's last United States ranking for girls as number 999 in 1993, while Social Security's own stated rule puts Kim at 1002 that year, outside the thousand altogether. The two use different tie-breaking conventions, so a rank is only ever as precise as the publisher behind it.
Social Security never merges spellings, so each one is a separate series in every annual file. Behind the Name files them as a single family, which means the two records answer different questions.
GOOD TO KNOW
Behind the Name files Kim here as one entry, a name given to women and men alike, now usually read as the short form of Kimberly.
A separate masculine Kim, recorded under its own entry as a Scandinavian short form of Joachim.
A feminine given name from the Sino-Vietnamese 金, meaning gold or metal.
Behind the Name records Kim as the most common surname in South and North Korea, written 김 in Hangul and 金 in Hanja, from the same character for gold.
GET INVOLVED
EDITOR'S PICK
READ
ASK
NOTE
SAY
Test your knowledge
No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal standing located, so October 11 is an ordinary working day.
COLOPHON
Kimberly's day honors a well-traveled name: it comes from a South African diamond city named for a British earl and ranked fifth among American girls' names across the 1960s.
Jim went to 92 Dutch boys last year and to 38 American ones, in a country with a twenty-sixth of the births. June 27 marks a short name that never folded back into James.
Until Charlotte Brontë gave it to her 1849 heroine, Shirley was rare for men and unrecorded for women. March 6 marks the name now, long since settled on the girls' side of the register.
