Qi
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Chinese: nonstandard spelling of qī
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/cʰi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Qi is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 65K(measured from records)
- SESweden1 in 48K
- DKDenmark1 in 111K
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
- 271 (measured from records)
- 1 in 48K (inferred from the name graph)
5,102 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Sweden
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
nonstandard spelling of qī
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Qi is read(measured from records)
Qi 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.
- Chinese37%
nonstandard spelling of qī
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English31%
Alternative form of chi.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Malay6.4%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Qi in Malay.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Qi 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.
5,102 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); 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)
Qi 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.
$ ‘Wondrous’; ‘enlightenment’. 2 ? ‘Fine jade’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In cau-drg-pro, horn
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
In Portuguese, chi (the fundamental life-force or energy in Chinese folklore)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In och, give a wife to, give as a wife
as a wordSchuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)
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)
- Ma Qib. 1869CNMa clique warlord controlling Gansu and Qinghai province at the beginning of the 20th century (1869-1931)
- Liu Qib. 1942CNChinese politician
- Cai Qib. 1955CNFirst Secretary of the Secretariat of the Chinese Communist Party
- Johnnie Tob. 1955CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong filmmaker (born 1955)
- Katherine Taib. 1974USnot in their usual nameAmerican attorney (born 1974)
- Shu Qib. 1976TWTaiwanese actress (born 1976)
- Kate Yeungb. 1984CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actress and singer
- Samantha Yeob. 1997SGnot in their usual nameSingaporean swimmer
- Lil Tayb. 2007CAnot in their usual nameAmerican-Canadian internet personality
- Qi of Xiab. 2200CNson of Yu the Great ; second Xia Dynasty king (r. 1978 BCE-1963 BCE)
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 56 sources across 28 countries.
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Qi mean, and where does it come from?
- nonstandard spelling of qī Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Qi?
- A machine transcription gives /cʰi/ (IPA) for Chinese.
- Is Qi a male or female name?
- Qi is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Qi have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 5.1 thousand people named Qi, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled qi.
- Where is Qi most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Qi is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 48 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Qi?
- In the United States, the national register counted 5,102 people named Qi in 2020, about 1 in 65 thousand residents.
- How common is Qi compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Qi is the 611th most common given name of 52,448 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Qi?
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/qiThe 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, “Qi” — the 611th most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.