Mair

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: (i) Scottish court official dealing with petty offenders, from Scottish English mair via Old French; (ii) a form of Meyer

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

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

Mair is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 23K(inferred from the name graph)
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 30K
  • USUnited States1 in 132K

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)

≈6,200 people, est.

Sources
287 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 21K (inferred from the name graph)

Italy, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Derivation of Mair: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Mair
  1. Scottish Englishmair(measured from records)
  2. OldFrench(measured from records)

(i) Scottish court official dealing with petty offenders, from Scottish English mair via Old French; (ii) a form of Meyer.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 25 languages in the etymology graph.

How Mair is read(measured from records)

Mair is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • English67%

    (i) Scottish court official dealing with petty offenders, from Scottish English mair via Old French; (ii) a form of Meyer.

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

    from Gael maor ‘officer’; first attested Symon le Mare 1296 Black (Perth)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

    more

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

  • German19%

    From Meier < mhd. meier 'farm steward, tenant farmer'; simplex shows ai/ay/ei/ey vowel spellings. Bearers: Mair 1657, Mayr 6157, Meir 173, Meyr 227.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Mair 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 Mair is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China≈6,200 est.≈1 in 224K—Mair5
IT Italy≈3,000 est.≈1 in 21K—Mair42
GB United Kingdom≈2,900 est.≈1 in 23KlistedMair194
US United States2,5161 in 132K2.5KMair287
AU Australia≈850 est.≈1 in 30K1Mair128
CH Switzerland2191 in 38K219Mair22
JM Jamaica≈93 est.≈1 in 30K—Mair17

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; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (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)

Mair is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Spain, United Kingdom, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Maír

  • German surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Germany, Austria, Italy, United States

    Also written Mai͏̈r

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Màir, Maĭr

  • Hindi surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United Kingdom, India, United States, Pakistan

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Màïr

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United Kingdom, United States, Canada

    Also written Maïr

  • Estonian surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland

    Languages: Estonian, Finnish

    Also written Maïr

48 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)

Mair is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • Welsh form of Mary, derived from Latin Maria via Old Welsh Meir. See also pMari.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • 1 . Scottish: occupational name for an officer of the courts whose functions resembled those of an English beadle (i.e. a minor official who dealt with petty offenders) and who was known as a mair. Compare Mayer 1. Reaney remarks that this title was used not only of the king’s herald or sergeant but also of such officers as a head forester. 2. Jewish: variant of Meyer 2.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

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)

1400160018002000John Mair, b. 1467Sarah Mair, b. 1846Lucy Mair, b. 1901Rafe Mair, b. 1931Siegfried Mair, b. 1939Victor H. Mair, b. 1943Peter Mair, b. 1951Eddie Mair, b. 1965Walter Mair, b. 1978Rosemary Mair, b. 1998

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)

FormalDear Mair,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 47 sources across 25 countries.

Official registers attesting Mair
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020102.5K#12,357
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020002.5K#11,722
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020202.4K#12,500
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)2024219#5,792
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 6

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 Mair?
A machine transcription gives /mɛɹ/ (IPA) for English.
What does the name Mair mean, and where does it come from?
(i) Scottish court official dealing with petty offenders, from Scottish English mair via Old French; (ii) a form of Meyer. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
What are other forms of the name Mair?
In the etymology graph, Mora, May and Mele are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Mair have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 6.2 thousand people named Mair in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mair.
How common is the name Mair?
In the United States, the national register counted 2,516 people named Mair in 2010, about 1 in 132 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Mair?

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

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, “Mair”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Mair parses inside a full name →