As a given name, Kam may be short for Kameron, which is a variant of Cameron, a given name which originated from a Scottish surname. Another similar shortened form is Cam. People with the given name or nickname Kam include:
As a Chinese surname, Kam may be a spelling of the pronunciation in different varieties of Chinese of the following surnames, listed based on their Pinyin spelling :
Jīn, homophonous with the above surname in Cantonese, though not in other varieties of Chinese
Qín, spelled Kam based on its Cantonese pronunciation
The Dutch surname Kam originated in multiple ways. As an occupational surname, it came from both Dutch meaning "comb", or from Middle Dutch kamme meaning "brewery". As a toponymic surname, it is a reduced form of Van Kam, referring to Chaam in North Brabant, near Breda. The Jewish surname Kam, also spelled Kamm, originated from various German words, including Middle High German kâm "mould" or kam "comb". As a Korean surname, Kam is the McCune–Reischauer and Yale Romanization spelling of the surname transcribed in the Revised Romanization of Korean as Gam ; it is written using the same character as for the Chinese surname Gān mentioned above. The bearers of this surname in Korea identify with a number of bon-gwan, including Changwon, Masan, Geochang, Buryeong, Changnyeong, Chungju, and Happo, but all of these are branches of the, and claim common descent from, a Chinese civil official who came to Goryeo in the retinue of Princess Noguk for her marriage to King Gongmin. It was one of eighteen Korean clans founded by Yuan Dynasty officials who accompanied princesses to Korea.
Statistics
In the Netherlands, there were 157 people with the surname Kam as of 2007, up from 38 in 1947. The 2000 South Korean census found 5,998 people in 1,910 households with the surname. A study by the National Institute of the Korean Language based on 2007 application data for South Korean passports found that 70% of applicants with this family name spelled it in Latin letters as Kam in their passports, while 20% spelled it Gam. Rarer alternative spellings included Kahm. The 2010 United States Census found 3,749 people with the surname Kam, making it the 8,749th-most-common name in the country. This represented an increase from 3,358 in the 2000 Census. In both censuses, slightly more than 70% of the bearers of the surname identified as Asian, and about 15% as White. It was the 404th-most-common surname among respondents to the 2000 Census who identified as Asian.
