Wailing

given name · Latin script

Meaning: A loud drawn out scream or howl

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

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

rarermore common
  • USUnited States≈1 in 3.5M(inferred from the name graph)
  • HKHong Kong≈1 in 16K
  • MYMalaysia≈1 in 408K

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)

≈960 people, est.

Sources
41 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 16K (inferred from the name graph)

Hong Kong, est.

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 Wai-Ling in GB United Kingdom.

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)

A loud drawn out scream or howl.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Wailing 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 Wailing is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China≈960 est.≈1 in 1.5M—Wailing6
HK Hong Kong≈460 est.≈1 in 16K—Wailing8
US United States≈95 est.≈1 in 3.5M—Wailing41
MY Malaysia≈80 est.≈1 in 408K—Wailing8
GB United Kingdom≈22 est.≈1 in 3M38Wai-Ling27
TW Taiwan≈16 est.≈1 in 1.4M—Wailing5
SG Singapore≈9 est.≈1 in 729K—Wailing4
NL Netherlands51 in 3.5M5Wailing5

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: Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017). 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)

Wailing is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Colombia, Chile, Venezuela

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Wai-Ling

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Wai-Ling

25 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.

Evidence(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Wailing under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Wailing mean, and where does it come from?
A loud drawn out scream or howl. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
Is Wailing a male or female name?
Wailing is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
In which country does Wailing have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 959 people named Wailing in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wailing.
How common is the name Wailing?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted 5 people named Wailing, about 1 in 3.5 million residents.

What do you want to know about Wailing?

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/wailing

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, “Wailing”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Wailing parses inside a full name →