Ming
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: from the name of Meng Mingshi, a senior minister of the state of Qin in the Spring and Autumn period (722^81 Bc)
Used for both men and women, depending on the country· national registers that list names by sex disagree
- United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed under both sexes
- Spain (INE): listed as male
- Finland (DVV): listed under both sexes
- Netherlands (Meertens NVB): listed under both sexes
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 32 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/mɪŋ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ming is a given name used for both men and women, depending on the country, written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Malaysia than in any other country. In Hong Kong it is the 71st most common given name.
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 371(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 1.3K
- SGSingapore≈1 in 2.6K
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.
- Malaysia (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 341 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 371 (inferred from the name graph)
≈26,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Hong Kong, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)from the name of Meng Mingshi, a senior minister of the state of Qin in the Spring and Autumn period (722^81 Bc). His descendants adopted the first character of his given name, which means ‘bright’, as their surname.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Ming is read
(measured from records)Ming is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English43%
from the name of Meng Mingshi, a senior minister of the state of Qin in the Spring and Autumn period (722^81 Bc). His descendants adopted the first character of his given name, which means ‘bright’, as their surname.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
of uncertain origin; possibly from a reduced form of the personal name Dominick.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
To mix, blend, mingle.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Chinese dynasty
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Chinese29%
nonstandard spelling of míng
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Inscription
as a wordrecorded as wuuAn English-Chinese Vocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect
- Malay11%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Ming in Malay.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Ming, 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)Ming 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 | #156 | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | — | Ming | 100 |
| HK Hong Kong | #71 | ≈20,000 est. | ≈1 in 371 | — | Ming | 102 |
| US United States | — | 9,534 | 1 in 35K | 6.1K | Ming | 341 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,500 est. | ≈1 in 15K | 1 | Ming | 129 |
| AU Australia | #618 | ≈2,500 est. | ≈1 in 10K | 2 | Ming | 169 |
| SG Singapore | #292 | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | — | Ming | 120 |
| NL Netherlands | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 11K | 101 | Ming | 29 |
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; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017). 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).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Sophia Leungb. 1933CAnot in their usual nameCanadian politician
- Ming Fayb. 1943USChinese-born American sculptor (1943–2025)
- Zhang Mingb. 1961CNChinese director
- Cai Mingb. 1961CNChinese singer and actress
- Ming C. Linb. 1965USAmerican computer scientist
- Leon Laib. 1966CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong singer and actor
- Woo Ming Jinb. 1976MYMalaysian film director, writer and producer
- Yao Mingb. 1980CNChinese basketball player (born 1980)
- Ming Marajb. 2006USsister of Nicki Minaj
- Meng FoonNZnot in their usual namemayor of Gisborne, New Zealand, and rugby league administrator
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)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)65 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 32 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 4.4K | #6,968 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.8K | #8,718 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.3K | #9,499 |
Reference works 6
- 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 given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Ming a male or female name?
- Ming is used for both men and women, depending on the country. National registers that list names by sex disagree: United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed under both sexes; Spain (INE): listed as male; Finland (DVV): listed under both sexes; Netherlands (Meertens NVB): listed under both sexes. We don't publish a percentage split.
- What does the name Ming mean, and where does it come from?
- from the name of Meng Mingshi, a senior minister of the state of Qin in the Spring and Autumn period (722^81 Bc). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- What are other forms of the name Ming?
- In the etymology graph, Minh is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Ming?
- A machine transcription gives /mɪŋ/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Ming?
- In the United States, the national register counted 9,534 people named Ming in 2020, about 1 in 35 thousand residents.
- How common is Ming compared with other names?
- In Malaysia, Ming is the 156th most common given name of 388,685 given names recorded there.
- In which country does Ming have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 26 thousand people named Ming in Malaysia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ming.
What do you want to know about Ming?
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/mingThe 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, “Ming” — the 156th most common given name in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.