Lui
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Lui is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Hong Kong it is the 79th most common surname. Recorded meaning: 3. Hawaiian: unexplained.
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 291(inferred from the name graph)
- SGSingapore≈1 in 7.9K
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 9.4K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 367 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 291 (inferred from the name graph)
≈120,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Hong Kong, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
3. Hawaiian: unexplained.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lui 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 | — | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Lui | 49 |
| HK Hong Kong | #79 | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 291 | — | Lui | 119 |
| US United States | — | 6,156 | 1 in 54K | 6.4K | Lui | 367 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈3,500 est. | ≈1 in 9.4K | — | Lui | 59 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 15K | 1 | Lui | 177 |
| SG Singapore | #646 | ≈780 est. | ≈1 in 7.9K | — | Lui | 91 |
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; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. 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)
Lui 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.
unexplained.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In cdo, an earthen dish to grind paints or medicines in
as a wordDictionary of the Foochow Dialect
In Dutch, lazy
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Dutch
In bbn, dugong
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In French, him, he; the third-person masculine singular personal pronoun used after a preposition, or as the predicate of a linking verb, or when disjoined from a sentence, or as a stressed subject
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)
- Lü Bub. 160CNnot in their usual nameChinese warlord and general
- Lü Mengb. 178CNnot in their usual nameGeneral serving under warlord Sun Quan (178-220)
- Chuan Leekpaib. 1938THnot in their usual nameThai politician
- Lei Fengb. 1940CNnot in their usual nameChinese soldier and communist icon (1940–1962)
- Kenneth Layb. 1942USnot in their usual nameformer chairman and CEO of Enron Corporation (1942-2006)
- Ray Luib. 1956CNHong Kong actor
- Lü Yueb. 1957CNnot in their usual nameChinese cinematographer and film director
- Lü Lipingb. 1960CNnot in their usual nameChinese actress
- Lei Junb. 1969CNnot in their usual nameChinese businessman, cofounder and CEO of Xiaomi
- Lü Huihuib. 1989CNnot in their usual nameChinese javelin thrower
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)
Attested in 69 sources across 35 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 6.4K | #5,277 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 6.2K | #5,641 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.6K | #5,662 |
Reference works 8
- 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
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)
- 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 Lui mean, and where does it come from?
- 3. Hawaiian: unexplained. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does Lui have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 116 thousand people named Lui in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lui.
- How common is the name Lui?
- In the United States, the national register counted 6,156 people named Lui in 2010, about 1 in 54 thousand residents.
- How common is Lui compared with other names?
- In Hong Kong, Lui is the 79th most common surname of 8,142 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lui?
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/luiThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Lui” — the 79th most common surname in Hong Kong. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.