Kazi comes from the Arabic qadi and means "judge" or "magistrate"; in Bangladesh and India it is a title and surname of families descended from Islamic judges, as with the Bengali national poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. In the United States it is also used as a short, modern-sounding given name. Kazi has moved from around number 5000 among US boys in the mid-2010s to number 2821 in 2025, its best rank to date.