Bee
surname · Latin script
Meaning: either beekeeper or a nickname for someone thought to resemble a bee, especially in industriousness
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/biː/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Bee is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Malaysia than in any other country.
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 2.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- SGSingapore≈1 in 4.6K
- INIndia1 in 708K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Bee itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Malaysia (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 374 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈15,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Malaysia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Bi in PK Pakistan.
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)
either beekeeper or a nickname for someone thought to resemble a bee, especially in industriousness
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Bee, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bee 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MY Malaysia | #270 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | — | Bee | 83 |
| US United States | — | 6,203as Bae | 1 in 54K | 6.8K | Bee | 374 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈4,900 est. | ≈1 in 43K | listed | Bee | 31 |
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈4,200 est. | ≈1 in 55K | — | Bi | 15 |
| ES Spain | — | 3,376as Ba | 1 in 15K | 3.4K | Bee | 27 |
| IN India | #525 | 1,872 | 1 in 708K | 1.9K | Bee | 89 |
| SG Singapore | #414 | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 4.6K | — | Bee | 88 |
| NO Norway | — | 554as Bu | 1 in 9.9K | 554 | — | 7 |
| HR Croatia | — | 146as Beli | 1 in 29K | 222 | — | — |
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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021). 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)
Bee 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, OE bēo 'bee', used of a busy, industrious person; first attested Walter le Be 1195 Oseney (O)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, komi, and honey ; v., to lick. Bee’s water = honey, kanya
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
In English, Walter le Be 1195 Oseney (O); Robert Be 1198 CurR (Y); William le Beo 1243 AssSo. OE bēo ‘bee’, used, no doubt, of a busy, industrious person.
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, cendant of Beaglaoch’, a personal name composed of the elements beag small + laoch hero. person, from the insect, ME be, OE beo, which has long been taken as the type of a busy worker. Cf. Beeman 2. Cogns.: Ger.: Bie(n). Du.: De Bij, Van der Bij.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, A flying insect, of the clade Anthophila within the hymenopteran superfamily Apoidea, known for its organised societies (though only a minority have them), for collecting pollen and (in some species) producing wax and honey.
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)
- Thomas Beeb. 1739USAmerican politician (1739-1812)
- Ephraim Beeb. 1802USAmerican politician (1802-1888)
- Hamilton Prioleau Beeb. 1822USAmerican politician in early Texas (1822-1897)
- Barnard Elliott Beeb. 1824USUnited States Army officer and Confederate States Army general during the American Civil War (1824-1861)
- Carlos Beeb. 1867USAmerican politician (1867-1932)
- Clair Beeb. 1896USAmerican basketball coach (1896-1983)
- Helen Beeb. 1939USAmerican psychologist and academic
- Susan Beeb. 1952USAmerican artist (born 1952)
- Samantha Beeb. 1969CACanadian comedic actress and author (born 1969)
- Asha Beeactress
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 44 sources across 23 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 303K | #6 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 5.1K | #6,445 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 4.6K | #6,776 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 4.5K | #7,434 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 1.9K | #3,299 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 77 | #33,229 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 77 | #32,979 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What are other forms of the name Bee?
- In the etymology graph, Bice and Biddy are forms of the same name in other languages.
- What does the name Bee mean, and where does it come from?
- either beekeeper or a nickname for someone thought to resemble a bee, especially in industriousness Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Bee?
- A machine transcription gives /biː/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- In which country does Bee have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 15 thousand people named Bee in Malaysia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bee.
- How common is the name Bee?
- In India, the national register counted 1,872 people named Bee, about 1 in 708 thousand residents.
- How common is Bee compared with other names?
- In Malaysia, Bee is the 270th most common surname of 291,743 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bee?
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/beeThe 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, “Bee” — the 270th most common surname in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.