Meiling
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Meiling is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Hong Kong it is the 14th most common given name.
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 423as Mei(inferred from the name graph)
- TWTaiwan≈1 in 526as Mei
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 653as Mei
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Meiling itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 342 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 423 (inferred from the name graph)
≈440,000 named Mei, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Hong Kong, est., as Mei
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Mei in US United States, MY Malaysia, HK Hong Kong and 3 more.
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
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Meiling 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 | — | ≈440,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.2K | — | Mei | 138 |
| MY Malaysia | #69 | ≈50,000 est. | ≈1 in 653 | 1.5K | Mei | 101 |
| TW Taiwan | #965 | ≈45,000 est. | ≈1 in 526 | — | Mei | 136 |
| US United States | — | 25,052as Mae | 1 in 13K | 103K | Mei | 342 |
| HK Hong Kong | #14 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 423 | — | Mei | 101 |
| NO Norway | — | 8,217as May | 1 in 665 | 18K | — | 14 |
| SG Singapore | #170 | ≈3,200 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Mei | 106 |
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 2010; data.gov.my — Name Popularity Dashboard (JPN, by decade and ethnicity); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Soong May-lingb. 1898USnot in their usual nameChiang Kai-shek's wife, First Lady of the Republic of China (1898–2003)
- Jo Mi-ryeongb. 1929KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actress born 1929
- Birei Kinb. 1934JPnot in their usual nameTaiwan-born Japanese critic and political activist
- Marilyn Chinb. 1955USnot in their usual nameAmerican writer
- Barbara Yungb. 1959CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actress (1959–1985)
- Yu Meilingb. 1967CNChinese Go player
- Zero Choub. 1969TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese film director
- Tracy Leeb. 1985MYnot in their usual nameMalaysian actress and television host
- Melek Hub. 1989TRnot in their usual nameTurkish table tennis player (born 1989)
- Wang Meilingb. 2000CNChinese tennis player
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 35 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.2K | #6,999 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2005 | 17 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2009 | 15 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2002 | 15 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2015 | 13 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2008 | 13 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2007 | 12 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2001 | 12 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2012 | 11 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1999 | 11 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1990 | 11 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1983 | 11 | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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
- Is Meiling a male or female name?
- Meiling is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Meiling have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 437 thousand people named Mei in China, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Meiling?
- In the United States, the national register counted 25,052 people named Mae in 2020, about 1 in 13 thousand residents.
- How common is Meiling compared with other names?
- In Hong Kong, Meiling is the 14th most common given name of 23,276 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Meiling?
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/meilingThe 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, “Meiling” — the 14th most common given name in Hong Kong. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.