Phí

surname · Latin script

Meaning: to waste; to squander; to spend

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

/fi˨˦/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Phí is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 123K(measured from records)
  • SESweden1 in 89K
  • DKDenmark1 in 113K

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)

2,708 people, 2020

Sources
116 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 89K (inferred from the name graph)

Sweden

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Phi in US United States, NL Netherlands.

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 waste; to squander; to spend

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Phí 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 Phí is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States2,7081 in 123K1.9KPhi116
SE Sweden1141 in 89K114—3
NL Netherlands871 in 199K61Phi12
DK Denmark521 in 113K42——
FI Finland441 in 127K80—4

2,708 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)

Phí is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name20 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Australia, United Kingdom, Germany

    Languages: English, German, Hindi

    Also written Phi, Ph-I, Phï, Phī, Phî

  • Swahili given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Kenya, Canada

    Also written Phi

  • Spanish given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, El Salvador, Philippines, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Phi, Phī, Phỉ, Phï

  • Khmer given name3 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Phi, Phī

  • Korean given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, South Korea

    Also written Phi

23 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)

Phí 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.

  • In ko-pro, millet

    as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)

  • In ko-pro, просо

    as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)

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)

05001000150020002500Fei Yi, b. 250Fei Danxu, b. 1801Fei Mu, b. 1906Fei Xiaotong, b. 1910Barbara Fei, b. 1931Fei Yu-ching, b. 1955Fei Junlong, b. 1965Fei Zhenxiang, b. 1978Fei Qinyuan, b. 2001
  • Fei Yib. 250CNnot in their usual nameShu Han state regent and general (died 253)
  • Fei Danxub. 1801not in their usual nameChinese artist (1801-1850)
  • Fei Mub. 1906CNnot in their usual nameChinese film director (1906-1951)
  • Fei Xiaotongb. 1910CNnot in their usual nameChinese anthropologist, sociologist (1910-2005)
  • Barbara Feib. 1931CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong opera singer (1931–2017)
  • Fei Yu-chingb. 1955TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese singer
  • Fei Junlongb. 1965CNnot in their usual nameChinese military pilot and an astronaut
  • Fei Zhenxiangb. 1978CNnot in their usual nameChinese actor and director
  • Fei Qinyuanb. 2001CNnot in their usual nameChinese idol singer and actress
  • Fei ShiCNnot in their usual name3rd century Shu Han state 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)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 7 sources across 4 countries.

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 Phí mean, and where does it come from?
to waste; to squander; to spend Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Phí?
A machine transcription gives /fi˨˦/ (IPA) for Vietnamese.
In which country does Phí have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 2.7 thousand people named Phí, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled phi.
Where is Phí most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Phí is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 89 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Phí?
In the United States, the national register counted 2,708 people named Phí in 2020, about 1 in 123 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Phí?

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

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

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, “Phí”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Phí parses inside a full name →