Kwai

given name · Latin script

Meaning: Alternative form of kuai (“yuan, Chinese currency”)

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

/ˈkwaɪ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Kwai is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • MYMalaysia≈1 in 5.8K(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 517K
  • HKHong Kong≈1 in 1.3K

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)

≈18,000 people, est.

Sources
151 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 1.3K (inferred from the name graph)

Hong Kong, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Alternative form of kuai (“yuan, Chinese currency”).

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Kwai 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 Kwai is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈18,000 est.≈1 in 79K—Kwai20
HK Hong Kong#348≈5,700 est.≈1 in 1.3K—Kwai57
MY Malaysia—≈5,600 est.≈1 in 5.8K—Kwai39
US United States—6431 in 517K422Kwai151
GB United Kingdom—≈250 est.≈1 in 261K—Kwai66
SG Singapore—≈240 est.≈1 in 26K—Kwai37
AU Australia—≈180 est.≈1 in 138K1Kwai43

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; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present). 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)

Kwai is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Kwaï

50 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)

Kwai 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 lgl, water

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

  • In mch, through, by; indicates motion by way of an aquatic object

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

  • In llu, spouse; husband or wife

    as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0

  • In kwd, river water

    as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0

  • In hts, warthog

    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)

  • Kong Guib. 656not in their usual nameTang dynasty person CBDB=140439
  • Zhuge GuiCNnot in their usual nameChinese politician
  • Chen GuiCNnot in their usual nameLate 2nd century Eastern Han official

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)

InformalHi Kwai,

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 15 sources across 9 countries.

Official registers attesting Kwai
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

  • 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

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 Kwai mean, and where does it come from?
Alternative form of kuai (“yuan, Chinese currency”). Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Kwai?
A machine transcription gives /ˈkwaɪ/ (IPA) for English.
Is Kwai a male or female name?
Kwai 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 Kwai have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 18 thousand people named Kwai in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kwai.
How common is the name Kwai?
In the United States, the national register counted 643 people named Kwai in 2020, about 1 in 517 thousand residents.
How common is Kwai compared with other names?
In Hong Kong, Kwai is the 348th most common given name of 23,276 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Kwai?

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

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, “Kwai” — the 348th most common given name in Hong Kong. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Kwai parses inside a full name →