Gai
given name · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Gai is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: hemp-nettle.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 30K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 346K
- CNChina≈1 in 104K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 185 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 30K (inferred from the name graph)
≈13,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Australia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
hemp-nettle
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gai 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.
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: SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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)
Gai 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 Italian, forma apocopada de Gaio
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
In cdo, to explain, to settle, to unloose W to disperse, to cut up, scattered
as a wordDictionary of the Foochow Dialect
In cdo, a boundary, a limit, a step, a hundred million, (gai ¥)
as a wordDictionary of the Foochow Dialect
In cdo, mone is x melodious sound, whistling of the wind
as a wordDictionary of the Foochow Dialect
In Russian, var of Gaii.
as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
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)
- Tamara Stillb. 1959USnot in their usual nameAmerican organist, conductor, composer, and financial advisor
- Gai Brodtmannb. 1963AUAustralian politician
- Gai Adb. 1963ILIsraeli writer
- Kerry ChantAUnot in their usual nameAustralian medical officer
- Lyn G. CookAUnot in their usual nameAustralian botanist and entomologist
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 42 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 664 | #36,294 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 515 | #42,163 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 377 | #51,809 |
| SD Sudan | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 2 | #25 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Gai mean, and where does it come from?
- hemp-nettle Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Is Gai a male or female name?
- Gai 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 Gai have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 13 thousand people named Gai in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gai.
- How common is the name Gai?
- In the United States, the national register counted 962 people named Gai in 2020, about 1 in 346 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Gai?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/gaiThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 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, “Gai”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.