Wai
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Wai is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Hong Kong it is the 22nd most common given name.
- NLNetherlands1 in 19K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 60K
- SESweden1 in 39K
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
- 295 (measured from records)
- 1 in 19K (inferred from the name graph)
5,502 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Wai 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 5,502 | 1 in 60K | 2.8K | Wai | 295 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 889 | 1 in 19K | 571 | Wai | 32 |
| SE Sweden | — | 260 | 1 in 39K | 260 | — | 16 |
| DK Denmark | — | 63 | 1 in 93K | 38 | — | 1 |
| FI Finland | — | 56 | 1 in 99K | 179 | — | 5 |
| HK Hong Kong | #22 | — | — | — | Wai | 107 |
5,502 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; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); 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); 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)
Wai is also recorded in 6 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In cdo, to beat a man until he confesses, as required: :
as a wordDictionary of the Foochow Dialect
In alu, fresh water (as opposed to _āsi_ 'saltwater'); moisture, sap, juice; river
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In kaw, alternative spelling of we (“sun, day”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In mch, synonym of jüwai (“shaman”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In apb, water
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Hawaiian, water, liquid of any kind other than sea water; juice, sap, honey; any liquid discharged from the body, as blood, semen; river, stream (in place-names)
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
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)
- Wu Weib. 1459CNnot in their usual nameChinese painter (1459-1508)
- Wong Waib. 1939CNHong Kong actor
- Du Weib. 1962CNnot in their usual nameAmbassador of China to Israel, Ambassador of China to Ukraine
- Xiaowei Zhuangb. 1972CNnot in their usual nameChinese American biophysicist
- Wang Weib. 1978CNnot in their usual nameChinese baseball player
- Jon M. Chub. 1979USnot in their usual nameAmerican filmmaker
- Yang Weib. 1979CNnot in their usual nameChinese badminton player
- Hu Weib. 1983CNnot in their usual nameChinese filmmaker
- Guo Weib. 1983CNnot in their usual nameChinese short track speed skater
- Pang Weib. 1986CNnot in their usual nameChinese sport shooter
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 53 sources across 28 countries.
Reference works 5
- 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 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
- Is Wai a male or female name?
- Wai is a male 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 Wai have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 5.5 thousand people named Wai, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wai.
- Where is Wai most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Wai is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 19 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Wai?
- In the United States, the national register counted 5,502 people named Wai in 2020, about 1 in 60 thousand residents.
- How common is Wai compared with other names?
- In Hong Kong, Wai is the 22nd most common given name of 23,276 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Wai?
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/waiThe 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, “Wai” — the 22nd most common given name in Hong Kong. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.