Mei
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A female given name from Mandarin
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈmeɪ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Mei is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Hong Kong it is the 14th most common given name.
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 423(inferred from the name graph)
- TWTaiwan≈1 in 526
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 653
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 Mei 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 342 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 423 (inferred from the name graph)
≈440,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Hong Kong, 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)
‘Plum’. One of the three so-called ‘friends of winter’ (dong sanyou): plum (mei), pine (song), and bamboo (zhu), which stay green throughout the winter. It is alsoa symbol of endurance.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
How Mei is read(measured from records)
Mei is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English39%
A female given name from Mandarin.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Chinese25%
from a patronymic or plural form of a short form of the personal names Bartolomeo, Romeo, or ToloMEO.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
nonstandard spelling of méi
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Malay16%
May (fifth month of the Gregorian calendar)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Mei, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Mei 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈440,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.2K | — | Mei | 138 |
| MY Malaysia | #69 | ≈50,000 est. | ≈1 in 653 | 1.5K | Mei | 101 |
| TW Taiwan | #965 | ≈45,000 est. | ≈1 in 526 | — | Mei | 136 |
| US United States | — | 25,052as Mae | 1 in 13K | 103K | Mei | 342 |
| HK Hong Kong | #14 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 423 | — | Mei | 101 |
| NO Norway | — | 8,217as May | 1 in 665 | 18K | — | 14 |
| SG Singapore | #170 | ≈3,200 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Mei | 106 |
| ES Spain | — | 578 | 1 in 87K | 578 | Mei | 58 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; data.gov.my — Name Popularity Dashboard (JPN, by decade and ethnicity); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Mei is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
‘Plum’. One of the three so-called ‘friends of winter’ (dong sanyou): plum (mei), pine (song), and bamboo (zhu), which stay green throughout the winter. It is alsoa symbol of endurance.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Italian, redução de Bartolomei; às vezes de Mattei ou Romei
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Hu Meib. 1958CNChinese director, television director and producer
- Mei Shigenobub. 1973JPJapanese journalist (1973-)
- Vanessa-Maeb. 1978SGnot in their usual nameBritish violinist
- Mei Finegoldb. 1982ILIsraeli singer
- Kurokawa Meib. 1987JPJapanese actress
- May'nb. 1989JPnot in their usual nameJapanese singer
- Jessie Mei Lib. 1995GBEnglish actress
- Mei Naganob. 1999JPJapanese actress (born 1999)
- Mei Yamazakib. 2005JPJapanese singer, dancer and model
- Mei SakuragaJPJapanese mangaka
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 88 sources across 41 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 11K | #2,249 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 578 | #4,126 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 474 | #2,195 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 252 | #2,249 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 192 | #4,944 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 117 | — |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Mei mean?
- In English, A female given name from Mandarin.
- How do you pronounce Mei?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈmeɪ/ (IPA) for English.
- Where does the name Mei come from?
- ‘Plum’. One of the three so-called ‘friends of winter’ (dong sanyou): plum (mei), pine (song), and bamboo (zhu), which stay green throughout the winter. It is alsoa symbol of endurance. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- Is Mei a male or female name?
- Mei is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Mei have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 437 thousand people named Mei in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mei.
- How common is the name Mei?
- In Spain, the national register counted 578 people named Mei, about 1 in 87 thousand residents.
- How common is Mei compared with other names?
- In Hong Kong, Mei is the 14th most common given name of 23,276 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Mei?
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/meiThe 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, “Mei” — the 14th most common given name in Hong Kong. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.