Papai
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from Belgium
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/papaɪ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Papai is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Thailand than in any other country.
- THThailand≈1 in 2.6Kas ประไพ(inferred from the name graph)
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 564K
- BRBrazil≈1 in 2.7M
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 Papai 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.
- Thailand (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 92 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 564K (inferred from the name graph)
≈27,000 named ประไพ, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Bangladesh, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
16 other spellings are counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Prapai in US United States, SE Sweden, ประไพ in TH Thailand and อภิรดา in ID Indonesia.
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)
from Belgium
Sources 1
- Dicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
Attested across 39 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Papai 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TH Thailand | #368 | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | #350,467 | ประไพ | 92 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈610 est. | ≈1 in 440K | — | อภิรดา | 1 |
| BD Bangladesh | — | ≈290 est. | ≈1 in 564K | — | Papai | 5 |
| BR Brazil | — | ≈80 est. | ≈1 in 2.7M | 108 | — | — |
| US United States | — | ≈58 est. | ≈1 in 5.7M | 238 | Prapai | 41 |
| SE Sweden | — | 22as Prapai | 1 in 464K | 22 | Prapai | 7 |
| IS Iceland | — | 1as Parpai | 1 in 351K | 1 | — | — |
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 2000; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)
Papai 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 Portuguese, daddy [BP]
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese
In Galician, second-person plural imperative of papar
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swahili, papaya (fruit)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Portuguese, dad, papa
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In tpi, mushroom
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)
- Betty Papaib. 1890CZHolocaust victim (born 1890)
- Al Papaib. 1917USAmerican baseball player (1917-1995)
- Jim Papaib. 1949CACanadian football player
- Georg Papaib. 1973ATAustrian politician
- Jerome PapaiFRNew Caledonian judoka
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)
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 22 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 238 | #75,466 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 230 | #87,019 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 210 | #88,336 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 108 | #59,814 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 17 | #27,936 |
| 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 Papai mean, and where does it come from?
- from Belgium Recorded by Dicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,….
- How do you pronounce Papai?
- A machine transcription gives /papaɪ/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- Is Papai a male or female name?
- Papai 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 Papai have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 27 thousand people named ประไพ in Thailand, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Papai?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 22 people named Prapai, about 1 in 464 thousand residents.
- How common is Papai compared with other names?
- In Thailand, Papai is the 368th most common given name of 488,147 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Papai?
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/papaiThe 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, “Papai” — the 368th most common given name in Thailand. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.