Mui
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Mui is a surname, most frequently recorded in Vietnam, where it is the 19th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Swahili, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: covering roof (for car, boat, etc.); hood.
- VNVietnam1 in 167◐
- HKHong Kong1 in 2.2K
- DEGermany1 in 5.2K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈21K ●
- #535 ●
- 2 ●
- Sources
- 355 ●
- 1 in 15K ◐
across 13 countries
of 21M surnames
recorded for this name
798K records
Official registry-verified
Norway
Spellings & scripts●
Locally spelled Mai in VN Vietnam, US United States, DE Germany and 13 more, Mikey in NL Netherlands, FI Finland, IE Ireland and 1 more and ไหม in TH Thailand.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin●
covering roof (for car, boat, etc.); hood
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VN Vietnam | #19 | 2,100,562 | 398K rec. | — | listed | Mai | 218 |
| DE Germany | #379 | 21,229 | 24K rec. | — | 1 | Mai | 159 |
| US United States | — | 17,445 | 283K rec. | 1 in 19K | 21K | Mai | 355 |
| AU Australia | #884 | 10,268 | 19K rec. | — | 1 | Mai | 152 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 9,597 | 15K rec. | — | 8 | Mai | 120 |
| MY Malaysia | #437 | 7,982 | 7.8K rec. | — | — | Mui | 53 |
| TH Thailand | — | 6,036 | 6.2K rec. | — | #495,588 | ไหม | 123 |
| CA Canada | — | 4,479 | 8.1K rec. | — | 1 | Mai | 95 |
| NG Nigeria | — | 4,154 | 6.5K rec. | — | — | Mai | 34 |
| PK Pakistan | #594 | 3,493 | 88 rec. | — | 1 | Mai | 17 |
| CN China | — | 2,423 | 1.6K rec. | — | — | Mai | 84 |
| HK Hong Kong | #203 | 1,363 | 3.5K rec. | — | — | Mui | 60 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English29K47%
- Swahili8.5K14%
- Chinese5.4K9%
- Malay5K8%
- Vietnamese4K6%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 29,322 | 47% |
| Swahili | 8,462 | 14% |
| Chinese | 5,407 | 9% |
| Malay | 5,035 | 8% |
| Vietnamese | 4,024 | 6% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Mui 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, Chinese plum
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Chinese, variant of Mel
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Chinese, unexplained.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Tongan, place or space behind or further back; rear; background; end, extremity, tip; back, rear, hind; later; young, immature, only partly grown or developed (as yet)
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In niu, the last; be last, follow; unripe, immature
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.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1999 | 18 |
| 2000 | 18 |
| 2001 | 16 |
| 2002 | 17 |
| 2003 | 16 |
| 2004 | 18 |
| 2005 | 18 |
| 2006 | 17 |
| 2007 | 16 |
| 2008 | 17 |
| 2009 | 17 |
| 2010 | 15 |
| 2011 | 15 |
| 2012 | 15 |
| 2013 | 17 |
| 2014 | 14 |
| 2015 | 13 |
| 2016 | 13 |
| 2017 | 14 |
| 2018 | 14 |
| 2019 | 14 |
| 2020 | 15 |
SE SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) — 22 years between 1999–2020. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Mei Yaochenb. 1002CNnot in their usual namepoet
- Mei Qingb. 1623not in their usual nameChinese landscape painter, calligrapher, writer and poet (1623-1697)
- Mei Lanfangb. 1894CNnot in their usual namePeking opera artist (1894-1961)
- Mei Ju-aob. 1904CNnot in their usual nameChinese jurist, professor, politician, and author (1904-1973)
- Mei Baojiub. 1934CNnot in their usual namePeking opera artist (1934-2016)
- Chiang C. Meib. 1935USnot in their usual nameAmerican fluid dynamicist
- Ann Muib. 1959CNHong Kong actor and singer (1959-2000)
- Anita Muib. 1963CNHong Kong singer and actress (1963–2003)
- Mei Tingb. 1975CNnot in their usual nameChinese actress
- Mei Fangb. 1989CNnot in their usual nameChinese Professional Footballer
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●
Attested in 33 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.8K | #8,743 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.6K | #8,631 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.4K | #8,916 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.5K | #6,264 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 236 | #15,802 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 112 | #6,264 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 103 | #8,381 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 39 | #11,826 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 25 | #20,889 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 24 | #9,968 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 21 | #188,821 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 20 | #19,260 |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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 2026-09-12 data build · 68 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Mui?
- We estimate roughly 21 thousand people bear Mui (counting its spellings and scripts) across 13 countries in our records.
- In which country does Mui have the most bearers?
- Mui is most frequently recorded in Vietnam, where it is most often spelled mai.
- How common is Mui compared with other names?
- In Vietnam, Mui is the 19th most common surname of 58,673 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Mui mean?
- Recorded meaning: covering roof (for car, boat, etc.); hood
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/muiThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
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, “Mui” — the 19th most common surname in Vietnam. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.