Thai
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Vietnamese: fetus
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/tʰaj˧˧/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Thai is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Vietnam than in any other country, where it is the 25th most common surname.
- VNVietnam≈1 in 640(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 13K
- USUnited States1 in 29K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Vietnam (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 191 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 640 (inferred from the name graph)
≈150,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Vietnam, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
Of or pertaining to Thailand.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
How Thai is read(measured from records)
Thai is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.
- Vietnamese64%
fetus
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English21%
Of or pertaining to Thailand.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
lang., people, SE Asia
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Thai 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VN Vietnam | #25 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 640 | listed | Thai | 191 |
| KH Cambodia | — | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 947 | — | Thai | 40 |
| US United States | — | 11,644 | 1 in 29K | 13K | Thai | 153 |
| CN China | — | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 131K | — | Thai | 12 |
| MY Malaysia | #878 | ≈2,500 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Thai | 55 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈240 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | Thai | 23 |
| NO Norway | — | 228 | 1 in 24K | 228 | — | 10 |
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; 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Thai is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In enm, alternative form of þei (“they”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Hungarian, Thai (of or relating to Thailand, its people or language)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Afrikaans, Thai (person from Thailand or of Thai descent)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Tai Hengb. 1662not in their usual nameQing dynasty person CBDB = 82339
- Charoen Wattanasinb. 1937THnot in their usual namebadminton player
- Tai Chih-yuanb. 1965TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese comedian, actor and television host
- Samuel Taib. 1966TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese singer and songwriter
- Minh Thaib. 1966USAmerican speedcuber
- My-Linh Thaib. 1968USAmerican politician from Washington state
- Tai Lihuab. 1976CNnot in their usual nameChinese choreographer
- Thái Thị Hồng Gấmb. 1985VNbadminton player
- Tai Thaiactor
- Elizabeth Thaiactress
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 59 sources across 30 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 4.7K | #3,631 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 881 | #3,631 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 172 | #5,321 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 22 | #18,007 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 6 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2022 | 5 | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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
- Where does the name Thai come from?
- Of or pertaining to Thailand. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Thai?
- In the etymology graph, Wattanasin is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Thai?
- In the United States, the national register counted 11,644 people named Thai in 2010, about 1 in 29 thousand residents.
- How common is Thai compared with other names?
- In Vietnam, Thai is the 25th most common surname of 62,915 surnames recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Thai?
- A machine transcription gives /tʰaj˧˧/ (IPA) for Vietnamese.
- What does the name Thai mean?
- In Vietnamese, fetus
- In which country does Thai have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 154 thousand people named Thai in Vietnam, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled thai.
What do you want to know about Thai?
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/thaiThe 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, “Thai” — the 25th most common surname in Vietnam. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.