Mai
Mai is a girl's name that peaked in 1990, when it was the 793rd most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 2,998th. About 5,200 Mais are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 33.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Mai boys named Mai
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 5,697
- Estimated living today
- 5,200
- Median age today
- 33
- Peak year
- 1990
- Best rank
- 793rd
- Rank in 2025
- 2,998th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 5,677 / 20
How old the living Mais are
born that year still alive today
Of the 5,697 babies given the name since 1880, about 5,200 are alive — 91 in every hundred. Roughly 980 of them are children and 120 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1992 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
from cmn 麥 (“wheat”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Mais
- Mai Aizawa (born 1980)Japanese association football player
- Mai Zetterling (1925–1994)Swedish actress and film director
- Mai Kuraki (born 1982)Japanese J-pop singer
- Mai Charoenpura (born 1969)Thai singer and actress
- Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim (born 1987)German chemist, science journalist and television presenter
- Mai Almasri (born 1959)Palestinian filmmaker
- Mai Nakahara (born 1981)Japanese voice actress and singer
- Murakami Mai (born 1996)Japanese artistic gymnast
People named Mai with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Mai is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Mai is most concentrated in Minnesota (8.0×), Wisconsin (5.6×), California (5.0×), Tennessee (3.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1990
The most popular girls’ names the year Mai peaked:
Mai elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway girls | Mai | 1,480 | 94th |
| France girls | Mai +1 spelling | 1,095 | 1,113th |
| England and Wales girls | Mai | 563 | 845th |
| Ireland girls | Mai | 184 | 270th |
| Switzerland girls | Mai | 71 | 721st |
| Belgium girls | Mai | 11 | 1,277th |
| France boys | Maï | 5 | 5,855th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Mai: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Mai | 52 | 0.004% | 538th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Mai | 19 | 0.004% | 516th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
Mai by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 16 | 325th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Mai among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Mai | 466 | 947 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Mai lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 315 women called Mai were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Araba/Álava | Mai | 12 | 0.069 | 1,092 |
| Navarra | Mai | 20 | 0.058 | 1,171 |
| Gipuzkoa | Mai | 19 | 0.051 | 1,231 |
| Bizkaia | Mai | 19 | 0.032 | 1,614 |
| Girona | Mai | 11 | 0.027 | 1,917 |
| Balears, Illes | Mai | 15 | 0.024 | 2,167 |
Listed in 15 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 37 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Mai against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.