Cài

given name · Latin script

Meaning: to pin; to fasten

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Cài is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 39K(measured from records)
  • FIFinland1 in 27K
  • ESSpain1 in 34K

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)

8,457 people, 2010

Sources
46 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 27K (inferred from the name graph)

Finland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Cai in US United States, MO Macao.

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)

to pin; to fasten

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Cài 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.

Where Cài is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—8,4571 in 39K13KCai46
ES Spain—1,4841 in 34K1.5K—4
AR Argentina—5661 in 80K566——
FI Finland—2041 in 27K204—2
PL Poland—1631 in 235K99——
NO Norway—1161 in 47K116—4
DK Denmark—1131 in 52K113——
MO Macao#161———Cai2

8,457 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Cài is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Caï, Caì, Cai, Cái

  • French surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, China, Canada

    Also written Cai, Caï, Caî, Çai, Cải

  • English surname16 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Australia, China, Canada

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Cai, Čai, Cái, Caï, Cải

3 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)

Cài 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 Chinese, Hanyu Pinyin reading of 埰

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

  • In tyz, short for pja cài

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

  • In ist, fall

    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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

05001000150020002500Cai Lun, b. 48Cai Yuanpei, b. 1868Cai Qi, b. 1955Tsai Ing-wen, b. 1956Tsai Ming-liang, b. 1957Amy Chua, b. 1962Jolin Tsai, b. 1980Charlene Choi, b. 1982Lauren Tsai, b. 1998Albert Tsai, b. 2004
  • Cai Lunb. 48CNChinese official credited with inventing paper (died 121)
  • Cai Yuanpeib. 1868CNChinese educator, Esperantist and the president of Peking University (1868-1940)
  • Cai Qib. 1955CNFirst Secretary of the Secretariat of the Chinese Communist Party
  • Tsai Ing-wenb. 1956TWnot in their usual name14th and 15th President of Republic of China (Taiwan)
  • Tsai Ming-liangb. 1957MYnot in their usual nameMalaysian-Taiwanese filmmaker (born 1957)
  • Amy Chuab. 1962USnot in their usual nameAmerican law professor and writer (born 1962)
  • Jolin Tsaib. 1980TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese singer, songwriter, and actress (born 1980)
  • Charlene Choib. 1982CAnot in their usual nameHong Kong actress and singer
  • Lauren Tsaib. 1998USnot in their usual nameChinese–American model and illustrator
  • Albert Tsaib. 2004USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor (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)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Cài under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Cài mean, and where does it come from?
to pin; to fasten Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
Is Cài a male or female name?
Cài 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 Cài have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 8.5 thousand people named Cài, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cai.
Where is Cài most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Cài is densest in Finland — about 1 in 27 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Cài?
In the United States, the national register counted 8,457 people named Cài in 2010, about 1 in 39 thousand residents.
How common is Cài compared with other names?
In Macao, Cài is the 161st most common surname of 436 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Cài?

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

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/c%C3%A0i

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, “Cài” — the 161st most common surname in Macao. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Cài parses inside a full name →