Yap
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: The high-pitched bark of a small dog, or similar
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/jæp/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Yap is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Malaysia than in any other country, where it is the 87th most common surname.
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 320(inferred from the name graph)
- SGSingapore≈1 in 740
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 2.5K
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.
- Malaysia (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 353 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 320 (inferred from the name graph)
≈100,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Malaysia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
The high-pitched bark of a small dog, or similar.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
How Yap is read(measured from records)
Yap is one spelling over 3 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.
- English59%
The high-pitched bark of a small dog, or similar.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Malay25%
a Chinese Indonesian surname from Hokkien
as a wordrecorded as Indonesiankaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish7.7%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Yap in Spanish.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Yap 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MY Malaysia | #87 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 320 | 791 | Yap | 155 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈95,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | listed | — | 5 |
| PH Philippines | #168 | ≈43,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Yap | 161 |
| CN China | — | ≈42,000 est. | ≈1 in 33K | — | Yap | 33 |
| SG Singapore | #45 | ≈8,400 est. | ≈1 in 740 | — | Yap | 170 |
| US United States | — | 4,590 | 1 in 72K | 5.2K | Yap | 353 |
| HK Hong Kong | #525 | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.2K | — | Yap | 53 |
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; data.gov.my — Name Popularity Dashboard (JPN, by decade and ethnicity); the id-github-names register. 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)
Yap is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In och, To put cover/lid on; cover; thatch; wooden leaf door; door leaf; to shut; join, unite
as a wordSchuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)
In Finnish, Yapese (Austronesian language spoken in the Federated States of Micronesia, especially by the inhabitants of Yap)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
ISO 639-2 & ISO 639-3 language code for Yapese.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Turkish, second-person singular imperative of yapmak
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)
- Ip Manb. 1893CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong martial artist (1893–1972)
- Ye Jianyingb. 1897CNnot in their usual nameformer Head of State of the People's Republic of China (1897-1986)
- Deanie Ipb. 1947USnot in their usual nameHong Kong singer and actress
- Frances Yipb. 1947CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong female singer
- Regina Ipb. 1950GBnot in their usual nameChinese politician in Hong Kong
- Sally Yehb. 1961CAnot in their usual nameTaiwanese-Canadian singer and actress
- Wilson Yipb. 1963CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong filmmaker
- Françoise Yipb. 1972CAnot in their usual nameCanadian actress
- Michelle Yeb. 1980CNnot in their usual nameChinese actress
- Marius Yob. 2000JPnot in their usual nameJapanese singer
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 27 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ID Indonesia | KPU voter-roll name tokens (GitHub) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- 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
- What does the name Yap mean, and where does it come from?
- The high-pitched bark of a small dog, or similar. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Yap?
- A machine transcription gives /jæp/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Yap have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 102 thousand people named Yap in Malaysia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled yap.
- How common is the name Yap?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,590 people named Yap in 2010, about 1 in 72 thousand residents.
- How common is Yap compared with other names?
- In Malaysia, Yap is the 87th most common surname of 291,743 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Yap?
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/yapThe 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, “Yap” — the 87th most common surname in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.