Pei
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: (i) from Pei, the name of a Chinese village; (ii) from Beiqiu, a place in China
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/piːiːaɪ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Pei is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Malaysia it is the 45th most common given name.
- TWTaiwan≈1 in 335(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 776
- SGSingapore≈1 in 2.6K
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
- 249 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 335 (inferred from the name graph)
≈250,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Taiwan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
(i) from Pei, the name of a Chinese village; (ii) from Beiqiu, a place in China
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
How Pei is read(measured from records)
Pei 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.
- English37%
(i) from Pei, the name of a Chinese village; (ii) from Beiqiu, a place in China
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Initialism of Prince Edward Island: a province of Canada.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
M., US architect; Mario, US
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Peiping [Beijing]
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
city, China
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Malay27%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Pei in Malay.
- Chinese21%
nonstandard spelling of pēi
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
Pei 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 | — | ≈250,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.6K | — | Pei | 123 |
| TW Taiwan | — | ≈71,000 est. | ≈1 in 335 | — | Pei | 137 |
| MY Malaysia | #45 | ≈42,000 est. | ≈1 in 776 | — | Pei | 102 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.5K | — | Pei | 54 |
| SG Singapore | #171 | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | — | Pei | 96 |
| US United States | — | 2,117 | 1 in 157K | 1.8K | Pei | 249 |
| HK Hong Kong | #393 | ≈940 est. | ≈1 in 7.7K | — | Pei | 51 |
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. 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)
- Pei Te Hurinui Jonesb. 1898NZNgati Maniapoto leader, interpreter, land officer, writer, translator, genealogist (1898–1976)
- Yan Pei-mingb. 1958CNChinese painter (born 1958)
- Pei Xub. 1966DEGerman writer
- Pei Zhaob. 1976DEGerman Go player
- Peipei Shangb. 1984CNnot in their usual namePh.D. Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie - Paris VI 2012
- Pei Xingrub. 1998CNChinese freestyle wrestler
- Mao-Pei TsuiUSPh.D. Brandeis University 2000
- Li PeiMing dynasty person CBDB = 358463
- Li PeiMing dynasty person CBDB = 295576
- Li PeiMing dynasty person CBDB = 216820
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 48 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.6K | #7,261 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 546 | #7,261 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1983 | 6 | — |
Reference works 6
- 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 given-name tokens
- 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 Pei mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) from Pei, the name of a Chinese village; (ii) from Beiqiu, a place in China Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Pei?
- A machine transcription gives /piːiːaɪ/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Pei a male or female name?
- Pei 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 Pei have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 247 thousand people named Pei in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pei.
- How common is the name Pei?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,117 people named Pei in 2020, about 1 in 157 thousand residents.
- How common is Pei compared with other names?
- In Malaysia, Pei is the 45th most common given name of 388,685 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Pei?
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/peiThe 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, “Pei” — the 45th most common given name in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.