Yai
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Yai is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Côte d’Ivoire than in any other country.
- CICôte d’Ivoire≈1 in 102K(inferred from the name graph)
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 152K
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 154K
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.
- Côte d’Ivoire (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 79 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 102K (inferred from the name graph)
≈270 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Côte d’Ivoire, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
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)
Yai 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | ≈270 est. | ≈1 in 102K | 214 | — | — |
| MY Malaysia | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 154K | — | Yai | 12 |
| ES Spain | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 324K | — | Yai | 6 |
| US United States | 124 | 1 in 2.7M | 63 | Yai | 79 |
| PK Pakistan | ≈55 est. | ≈1 in 4.2M | — | Yai | 6 |
| HK Hong Kong | ≈48 est. | ≈1 in 152K | — | Yai | 3 |
| SG Singapore | ≈16 est. | ≈1 in 398K | — | Yai | 7 |
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; nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies. 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)
Yai is also recorded in 6 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In kei, father (address form used by small children, and in mourning songs)
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Chinese, nonstandard spelling of yái
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In tft, to put a child on one's lap
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In skz, 1sg. nominative pronoun: I
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In bhw, father
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In agf, mother
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
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)
- Saburō Yaib. 1895JPJapanese businessman
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 14 sources across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies | — | 214 | #1,994 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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
- Is Yai a male or female name?
- Yai 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 Yai have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 269 people named Yai in Côte d’Ivoire, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Yai?
- In the United States, the national register counted 124 people named Yai in 2020, about 1 in 2.7 million residents.
What do you want to know about Yai?
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/yaiThe 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, “Yai”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.