Wèi

surname · Latin script

Wèi is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: to fear, be in awe of; to respect.

rarermore common
  • SESweden1 in 18K(measured from records)
  • USUnited States1 in 19K
  • ISIceland1 in 32K

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.

United States (measured from records)

17,173 people, 2020

Sources
193 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 18K (inferred from the name graph)

Sweden

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Wei in US United States, CN China.

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)

to fear, be in awe of; to respect

Sources 2

  • A concise dictionary of first names
  • Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)

Attested across 23 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Wèi 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.

Where Wèi is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States17,1731 in 19K15KWei52
ES Spain7681 in 65K953—4
SE Sweden5631 in 18K563—3
PL Poland2761 in 139K195——
CN China≈240 est.≈1 in 5.8M—Wei31
DK Denmark1361 in 43K130——
IS Iceland111 in 32K11——

17,173 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Wèi is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Chinese given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, China, Malaysia, Taiwan

    Also written Wei, Wěi, Wéi

  • English given name13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Malaysia, Australia, Singapore

    Also written Wei, Wēi, Wéì, Weî, Weï

  • Lao given name18 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, United States, Thailand, Malaysia

    Languages: Lao, Thai

    Also written Wei, Wiat, เวียช, Veys, Weichi

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Wèi 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.

  • In Chinese, Hanyu Pinyin reading of 為 /为

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In ksi, language

    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)

0500100015002000Shang Yang, b. 390Wei Zheng, b. 580Wei Yuan, b. 1794Paul Wei Ping-ao, b. 1929Wei Jingsheng, b. 1950Wei Fenghe, b. 1954Wei Te-sheng, b. 1969Zhou Wei Hui, b. 1973Michelle Wai, b. 1984
  • Shang Yangb. 390CNnot in their usual nameQin State statesman, chancellor and reformer (c. 390–338 BC)
  • Wei Zhengb. 580CNTang Dynasty chancellor (580-643)
  • Wei Yuanb. 1794CNQing dynasty Chinese scholar (1794-1857)
  • Paul Wei Ping-aob. 1929CNChinese actor (1929-1989)
  • Wei Jingshengb. 1950CNChinese democracy activist and dissident
  • Wei Fengheb. 1954CN12th Minister of National Defense of the People's Republic of Cjhina
  • Wei Te-shengb. 1969TWTaiwanese film director and screenwriter
  • Zhou Wei Huib. 1973CNChinese writer
  • Michelle Waib. 1984CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actress and model (born 1984)
  • Hua MulanCNnot in their usual nameChinese legendary female warrior

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

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Wèi under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Wèi mean, and where does it come from?
to fear, be in awe of; to respect Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names and Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007).
In which country does Wèi have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 17 thousand people named Wèi, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wei.
Where is Wèi most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Wèi is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 18 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Wèi?
In the United States, the national register counted 17,173 people named Wèi in 2020, about 1 in 19 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Wèi?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/w%C3%A8i

The 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, “Wèi”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Wèi parses inside a full name →