Family name origins & meanings
- Muslim : from a personal name based on Arabic ka‛b ‘fame’, ‘glory’. This was the name of the ancestors of two different tribes in Mecca, Ka‛b bin Rabiah and Ka‛b bin Kilāb.
- Muslim : possibly also from a personal name based on Arabic ka’ba ‘sorrow’.
- Japanese : ‘birch tree’. The name is not common in Japan.
- Czech (Kába) : from the personal name Kába, a derivative of the Biblical name Gabriel.
- Hungarian : from kaba ‘falcon’, from Serbian and Croatian koba, kobac ‘sparrowhawk’, hence a nickname for someone thought to resemble a falcon, or a metonymic occupational name for a falconer. Alternatively, it may be a nickname for a slow-witted person, from kába ‘slow’, ‘lethargic’. It could also be a habitational name from places so called in Szabolcs county in northern Hungary and in former K{u’’}lső Szolnok county, now in Romania.
