Wee
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Small, little
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/wiː/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Wee is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 60th most common surname.
- USUnited States1 in 246K(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 21K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 336K
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
- 294 (measured from records)
- 1 in 21K (inferred from the name graph)
1,353 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Small, little.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Wee 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 | — | 1,353 | 1 in 246K | 1.6K | Wee | 294 |
| NO Norway | — | 260 | 1 in 21K | 260 | — | 15 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 25 | 1 in 336K | 25 | — | 20 |
| IN India | — | 20 | 1 in 66M | 20 | — | 17 |
| FI Finland | — | 16 | 1 in 348K | 27 | — | 6 |
| DK Denmark | — | 12 | 1 in 489K | 12 | — | — |
| SG Singapore | #60 | — | — | — | Wee | 172 |
1,353 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; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Wee is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In ki, alternative spelling of we (“you, thou”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Filipino, a Chinese Filipino surname from Hokkien
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In pdt, pain, ache, hurting
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In sco, small, little, tiny
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Dutch, nauseating
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)
- Huang Xianfanb. 1899CNnot in their usual nameChinese historian, ethnologist and educator (1899-1982)
- Anna May Wongb. 1905USnot in their usual nameChinese American actress (1905-1961)
- Wee Kim Weeb. 1915SG4th President of Singapore (1915–2005)
- James Wongb. 1959USnot in their usual nameHong Kong and American director, screenwriter and producer
- B. D. Wongb. 1960USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
- Anthony Wong Chau-sangb. 1961CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actor, screenwriter and film producer (*1961)
- Jensen Huangb. 1963USnot in their usual nameAmerican entrepreneur and businessman; founder and CEO of Nvidia
- Penny Wongb. 1968MYnot in their usual nameAustralian politician
- Lawrence Wongb. 1972SGnot in their usual namePrime Minister of Singapore since 2024
- Joshua Wongb. 1996CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong politician
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 31 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 198 | #31,336 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 76 | #31,336 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 27 | #14,403 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 25 | #20,022 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 8 | #25,451 |
Reference works 5
- 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
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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
- What does the name Wee mean, and where does it come from?
- Small, little. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Wee?
- A machine transcription gives /wiː/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Wee have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.4 thousand people named Wee, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wee.
- Where is Wee most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Wee is densest in Norway — about 1 in 21 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Wee?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,353 people named Wee in 2010, about 1 in 246 thousand residents.
- How common is Wee compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Wee is the 60th most common surname of 78,292 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Wee?
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/weeThe 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, “Wee” — the 60th most common surname in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.