Kairi is a Japanese name whose first element kai is usually written with the character for "sea"; the second, ri, can stand for "village" or "jasmine", so the name is often read as "sea village". American parents discovered it through Kairi, the heroine of the video game series Kingdom Hearts, launched in 2002. Kairi entered the US top 1000 in 2010, peaked at number 689 in 2019 and ranks number 1041 in 2025.