Bhai
surname · Latin script
Meaning: friend, dude, man
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Bhai is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Pakistan than in any other country.
- PKPakistan≈1 in 1.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 4.5K
- USUnited States1 in 28Kas Vue
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Bhai itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Pakistan (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 177 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈160,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Pakistan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
friend, dude, man
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bhai 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PK Pakistan | #427 | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Bhai | 46 |
| BD Bangladesh | #207 | ≈36,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | — | Bhai | 30 |
| US United States | — | 11,717as Vue | 1 in 28K | 14K | Bhai | 137 |
| IN India | #340 | 5,121as Bhui | 1 in 259K | 5.1K | Bhai | 177 |
| AF Afghanistan | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 33K | — | Bhai | 6 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈820 est. | ≈1 in 40K | — | Bhai | 17 |
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; 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Bhai is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In lic, bamboo raft
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In hns, brother
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In stp, tail
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 14 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 3.4K | #2,060 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 1.5K | #417 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 191 | #100,867 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 175 | #102,688 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 144 | #112,967 |
| 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
- What does the name Bhai mean, and where does it come from?
- friend, dude, man Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Bhai have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 159 thousand people named Bhai in Pakistan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bhai.
- How common is the name Bhai?
- In the United States, the national register counted 11,717 people named Vue in 2010, about 1 in 28 thousand residents.
- How common is Bhai compared with other names?
- In Pakistan, Bhai is the 427th most common surname of 51,489 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bhai?
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/bhaiThe 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, “Bhai” — the 427th most common surname in Pakistan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.