Lăî
surname · Latin script
Lăî is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Middle English lai, lay, from Old French lai (“song, lyric, poem”), from Old Frankish *laik, *laih (“play, melody, song”), from Proto-Germanic *laikaz, *laikiz (“jump, play, dance, hymn”), from P.
- USUnited States1 in 17K(measured from records)
- CHSwitzerland1 in 22K
- FIFinland1 in 26K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 33 (measured from records)
- 1 in 17K (inferred from the name graph)
19,157 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Lai in US United States, IN India, MM Myanmar (Burma).
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)
- Middle Englishlai(measured from records)
- Old Frenchlai“song“song, lyric, poem”(measured from records)
- Old Frankish*laik“play“play, melody, song”(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic*laikaz“jump“jump, play, dance, hymn”(measured from records)
- Proto-Indo-European*leyg-“to jump“to jump, spring, play”(measured from records)
From Middle English lai, lay, from Old French lai (“song, lyric, poem”), from Old Frankish *laik, *laih (“play, melody, song”), from Proto-Germanic *laikaz, *laikiz (“jump, play, dance, hymn”), from Proto-Indo-European *leyg- (“to jump, spring, play”). Akin to Old High German leih (“a play, skit, melody, song”), Middle High German leich (“piece of music, epic song played on a harp”), Gothic 𐌻𐌰𐌹𐌺𐍃 (laiks, “a dance”), Old English lācan (“to move quickly, fence, sing”). More at lake.
Sources 5
- 25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
- A Genealogists Guide to Indian Names A Reference for First Names from India
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wiktionary
- Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lăî 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 | — | 19,157 | 1 in 17K | 22K | Lai | 26 |
| IN India | — | 2,898 | 1 in 458K | 2.9K | Lai | 1 |
| ES Spain | — | 467 | 1 in 107K | 467 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | — | 376 | 1 in 22K | 376 | — | — |
| SE Sweden | — | 305 | 1 in 33K | 305 | — | 1 |
| FI Finland | — | 216 | 1 in 26K | 216 | — | — |
| NO Norway | — | 208 | 1 in 26K | 208 | — | 1 |
| MM Myanmar (Burma) | #160 | — | — | — | Lai | 33 |
19,157 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Lăî mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English lai, lay, from Old French lai (“song, lyric, poem”), from Old Frankish *laik, *laih (“play, melody, song”), from Proto-Germanic *laikaz, *laikiz (“jump, play, dance, hymn”), from P… Recorded by 25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado and A Genealogists Guide to Indian Names A Reference for First Names from India and 3 other sources.
- In which country does Lăî have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 19 thousand people named Lăî, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lai.
- Where is Lăî most common?
- Lăî is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 17 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Lăî?
- In the United States, the national register counted 19,157 people named Lăî in 2010, about 1 in 17 thousand residents.
- How common is Lăî compared with other names?
- In Myanmar (Burma), Lăî is the 160th most common surname of 12,945 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lăî?
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/l%C4%83%C3%AEThe 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, “Lăî” — the 160th most common surname in Myanmar (Burma). Data snapshot 2026-10-10.