Wey
surname · Latin script
Meaning: 'person who lives by a road or path', or 'person from Way or Waye'
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/weɪ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Wey is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Switzerland than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 358K(measured from records)
- CHSwitzerland1 in 6K
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 36K
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.
- Switzerland (measured from records)
- Sources
- 256 (measured from records)
- 1 in 6.0K (inferred from the name graph)
1,401 people, 2024
Highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
'person who lives by a road or path', or 'person from Way or Waye'.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Wey 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CH Switzerland | 1,401 | 1 in 6K | 1.4K | Wey | 39 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 203K | — | Wey | 28 |
| US United States | 930 | 1 in 358K | 930 | Wey | 256 |
| MY Malaysia | ≈910 est. | ≈1 in 36K | — | Wey | 44 |
| DE Germany | ≈700 est. | ≈1 in 115K | listed | — | — |
| BE Belgium | 208 | 1 in 56K | 208 | Wey | 19 |
| SG Singapore | ≈60 est. | ≈1 in 104K | — | Wey | 28 |
1,401 people counted by BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames), 2024. 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; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); the dfa-band-1 register. 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)
Wey 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 English, An old English measure of weight containing 224 pounds; equivalent to 2 hundredweight.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, river, England
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In cdo, to show off one’s beauty ¥i2e(Z2) amorous behavior, prostitution
as a wordDictionary of the Foochow Dialect
In Spanish, chump, punk, dumbass, idiot, jerk
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In knj, to sleep
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)
- Shang Yangb. 390CNnot in their usual nameQin State statesman, chancellor and reformer (c. 390–338 BC)
- Wei Zhengb. 580CNnot in their usual nameTang Dynasty chancellor (580-643)
- Wei Yuanb. 1794CNnot in their usual nameQing dynasty Chinese scholar (1794-1857)
- Paul Wei Ping-aob. 1929CNnot in their usual nameChinese actor (1929-1989)
- Wei Jingshengb. 1950CNnot in their usual nameChinese democracy activist and dissident
- Wei Fengheb. 1954CNnot in their usual name12th Minister of National Defense of the People's Republic of Cjhina
- Wei Te-shengb. 1969TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese film director and screenwriter
- Zhou Wei Huib. 1973CNnot in their usual nameChinese writer
- Michelle Waib. 1984CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actress and model (born 1984)
- Hua MulanCNnot in their usual nameChinese legendary female warrior
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 23 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 1.4K | #763 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 930 | #26,261 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 878 | #28,830 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 832 | #27,313 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 208 | #8,102 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Noms de famille (family names) | — | 187 | #9,655 |
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 1 | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Wey mean, and where does it come from?
- 'person who lives by a road or path', or 'person from Way or Waye'. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Wey?
- A machine transcription gives /weɪ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Wey have the most bearers?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted about 1.4 thousand people named Wey, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wey.
- Where is Wey most common?
- Wey is densest in Switzerland, where the national register counts about 1 in 6.0 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Wey?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted 1,401 people named Wey in 2024, about 1 in 6.0 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Wey?
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/weyThe 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, “Wey”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.