יי
surname · Hebrew script
Meaning: abbreviation of יהוה (YHWH)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
יי is a surname written in the Hebrew script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- ILIsrael≈1 in 302K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 19Kas Yi
- FIFinland1 in 72Kas Yi
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than יי itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 10 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 302K (inferred from the name graph)
17,934 named Yi, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Israel, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
abbreviation of יהוה (YHWH)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
יי counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 17,934as Yi | 1 in 19K | 19K | יי | 9 |
| ES Spain | 195as Yi | 1 in 256K | 571 | — | — |
| AR Argentina | 100as Yi | 1 in 455K | 100 | — | 1 |
| FI Finland | 77as Yi | 1 in 72K | 342 | — | — |
| PL Poland | 63as Yi | 1 in 608K | 98 | — | 1 |
| NO Norway | 38as Yi | 1 in 144K | 204 | — | 1 |
| CH Switzerland | 37as Yi | 1 in 227K | 37 | — | 1 |
| IL Israel | ≈29 est. | ≈1 in 302K | listed | יי | 10 |
17,934 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling yi. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Yi Tso-linb. 1897CNChinese linguist, educator and philanthropist (1897-1945)
- Yi Zhongtianb. 1947CNChinese scholar
- Yi Gangb. 1958CNExecutive at People's Bank of China
- Yee Chin-yenb. 1959TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese film director, screenwriter, actor
- Yi Jingqianb. 1974CNChinese tennis player
- Lo Mutucb. 1986USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
- Yi Jianlianb. 1987CNChinese basketball player (born 1987)
- Yi Lib. 1987CNChinese basketball player (born 1987)
- Yi Silingb. 1989CNsport shooter
- Jackson Yeeb. 2000CNnot in their usual nameChinese singer and actor
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name יי mean, and where does it come from?
- abbreviation of יהוה (YHWH) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does יי have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 18 thousand people named Yi, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name יי?
- In the United States, the national register counted 17,934 people named Yi in 2010, about 1 in 19 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about יי?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/%D7%99%D7%99The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “יי”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.