Salai

loc · Latin script

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

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

Salai is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in North Macedonia than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • HRCroatia1 in 41K(measured from records)
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 133K
  • NONorway1 in 161K

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 Salai 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.

North Macedonia (measured from records)

204 named Салаи

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
19 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 41K (inferred from the name graph)

Croatia

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

SalaiLatin(measured from records)
СалайCyrillic(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Šalai in HR Croatia.

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

No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Salai 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 Salai is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
MK North Macedonia204as Салаи1 in 10K204——
BR Brazil1631 in 1.3M163——
HR Croatia1041 in 41K104Šalai19
IN India831 in 16M83—1
CH Switzerland631 in 133K63—1
NO Norway341 in 161K34——
EE Estonia≈4 est.≈1 in 351Klisted—3

204 people counted by State Statistical Office — living population names. 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: State Statistical Office — living population names; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)

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

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Šalai

  • French surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France

    Also written Salaï, Salaî, Salãi

  • Burmese given name30 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Myanmar (Burma)

    Also written Ŝälãï, Šâläī, Ŝâlâî, Sàlai, Ŝalai

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Salaí, Salaï

  • Thai given name30 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand

    Also written สไลด์, ไสล, สุไล, สีลาย, สีไล

  • Russian surname20 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Türkiye

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Салай, Салаи, Салаі, Салаї, Salay

57 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)

Salai is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Italian, first-person singular past historic of salare

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

  • In French, first-person singular past historic of saler

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

  • In Latvian, dative singular of sala

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

  • In liv, thief

    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.

How to address them(machine-generated)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 23 sources across 15 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

How do you pronounce Salai?
A machine transcription gives /səlaɪ/ (IPA) for Hindi.
In which country does Salai have the most bearers?
In North Macedonia, the national register counted about 204 people named Салаи, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Salai most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Salai is densest in Croatia — about 1 in 41 thousand people — even though North Macedonia holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Salai?
In Brazil, the national register counted 163 people named Salai, about 1 in 1.3 million residents.

What do you want to know about Salai?

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/salai

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, “Salai”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Salai parses inside a full name →