Balai
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/balaj/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Balai is a given name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in India.
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
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Balai counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | — | 1.2K | — |
| US United States | — | 103 | — |
| NL Netherlands | — | 58 | — |
| GY Guyana | — | 10 | — |
| PL Poland | — | 8 | — |
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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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)
Balai 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 nij, large, open building, either entirely without walls or with 2-3 foot high walls. In Pulopetak these are built only when one holds a death feast. Further inland every village has its _balai_, where games are played, where community gatherings and the discussion of legal matters take place, and where visitors find lodging
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In zlm, public building, in contrast to a private house
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In se, third-person singular past indicative of ballat
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Malay, hall, station, large building for public uses
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Portuguese, second-person plural imperative of balar
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In gdd, a fish about two feet long, red color
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)
- Zsuzsa Balaib. 1947HUHungarian costume designer (born 1947)
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 16 sources across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 1.2K | #4,713 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 103 | #157,234 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 98 | #156,269 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 58 | #28,277 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 45 | #6,425 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 10 | #615 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 8 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 8 | #149,596 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 4 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 4 | #213,857 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- How do you pronounce Balai?
- A machine transcription gives /balaj/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- Is Balai a male or female name?
- Balai 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 Balai have the most bearers?
- Balai is most frequently recorded in India.
What do you want to know about Balai?
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/balaiThe 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, “Balai”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.