Rei

loc · Latin script

Meaning: king

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Rei is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in Japan.

rarermore common
  • JPJapan

Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Japan (inferred from the name graph)

no count published

Sources
153 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Re-I in JP Japan.

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)

king

Sources 1

  • A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese

Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Rei counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Where Rei is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
JP Japan——Re-I125
AL Albania—1.7K——
US United States—692—153
BR Brazil—148——
XK Kosovo—141——
SE Sweden—139—7

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: INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (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).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Rei is also recorded as 8 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Spain, Brazil, United Kingdom

    Also written Rèï, Reí, Reï

  • Albanian name8 spellings in the group

    Also written Řeí, Réï, Reì, Rêï, Reí

  • Spanish name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, Paraguay, Colombia, Argentina

    Also written Reí, Reî, Rëï, Réi

  • French surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France

    Also written Reï, Réi, Rëï, Reî, Rëì

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Ŕĕĩ

  • a separate name6 spellings in the group

    Also written Rëi, Řëî, Řëí, Reí

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Reĭ, Réi

  • Hindi name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India

    Also written Reí, Réï

69 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Rei 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.

  • In Portuguese, king (monarch)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • rei; Santarém

    as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…

  • In Romanian, , buc. (orig. din Cehoslovacia (RI VIII 117).

    as a nameDictionar Onomastic Rominesc

  • Friendly, companion, or my friend

    as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database

  • In English, Biblical name

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

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)

18501900195020002050August Rei, b. 1886Rei Nakanishi, b. 1938Rei Kawakubo, b. 1942Rei Dan, b. 1971Heather Donahue, b. 1974Rei Kikukawa, b. 1978Rei Mizuna, b. 1984Rei Okamoto, b. 1991Rei Kuromiya, b. 2000Rei, b. 2004
  • August Reib. 1886EEEstonian politician (1886–1963)
  • Rei Nakanishib. 1938JPJapanese lyricist, composer, writer, music producer (1938-2020)
  • Rei Kawakubob. 1942JPJapanese fashion designer, business woman (1942-)
  • Rei Danb. 1971JPJapanese actress
  • Heather Donahueb. 1974USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress and writer
  • Rei Kikukawab. 1978JPJapanese actress and model
  • Rei Mizunab. 1984JPJapanese AV idol
  • Rei Okamotob. 1991JPJapanese model and actress
  • Rei Kuromiyab. 2000JPJapanese singer
  • Reib. 2004JPJapanese rapper and singer (born 2004)

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 65 sources across 36 countries.

Reference works 2

  • 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 Rei mean, and where does it come from?
king Recorded by A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese.
In which country does Rei have the most bearers?
Rei is most frequently recorded in Japan, where it is most often spelled re-i.

What do you want to know about Rei?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/rei

The 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, “Rei”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Rei parses inside a full name →