Pui

Name: Pui: recorded bearers, distribution and rank
Creator: Mondonomo
Published: 2026-10-13
License: https://mondonomo.ai/tos#rights

given name · Latin script

Meaning: a Chinese Indonesian surname from Cantonese

Used for both men and women, depending on the country· national registers that list names by sex disagree

United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed as female
Netherlands (Meertens NVB): listed as female
Finland (DVV): listed under both sexes

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 16 countries

/pui/(machine-generated) Malay · model-generated

Say it in

Pui 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.

HKHong Kong≈1 in 500(inferred from the name graph)
MYMalaysia≈1 in 1.8K
SGSingapore≈1 in 14Kfew records

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

: Malaysia (inferred from the name graph)
Record sources: 184 (measured from records)
: ≈1 in 500 (inferred from the name graph)

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)Make your nomograph ✦

Meaning & origin

a Chinese Indonesian surname from Cantonese.

Cited for this meaning 1

kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Where in the world

Pui 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.

Where Pui is recorded, by country
Country					Most common spelling	Sources
MY Malaysia	#711	≈19,000 est.	≈1 in 1.8K	—	Pui	60
HK Hong Kong	#135	≈15,000 est.	≈1 in 500	—	Pui	72
US United States	—	1,199	1 in 277K	941	Pui	184
AU Australia	—	≈620 est.	≈1 in 44K	1	Pui	100
IN India	—	≈510 est.	≈1 in 2.9M	68	—	12
SG Singapore	—	≈430 est.	≈1 in 14K	—	Pui	49
NL Netherlands	—	214	1 in 81K	201	Pui	18

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); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls. 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 names spelled this way

Pui is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

Spanish given name7 spellings in the group
Most recorded in United States, Malaysia, Venezuela, Spain
Languages: Spanish, Portuguese
Also written Püi, Pūí, Puí, Puį, Pụi
Hindi given name3 spellings in the group
Most recorded in Malaysia, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, United States
Languages: Hindi, Urdu
French given name5 spellings in the group
Most recorded in France, United States, Hong Kong, Malaysia
Also written Puï, Pùi, Pụi

53 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses

Pui 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 fro, well (structure from which water can be drawn)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Dutch, facade, front of a building
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In lmo, chicken
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In tou, joyful
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In zsa, water
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

Pei Xiub. 224CNnot in their usual nameChinese cartographer and geographer (224-271)
Pei Weib. 267CNnot in their usual namejin dynasty minister and Xuanxue thinker
Pei Songzhib. 372CNnot in their usual nameChinese historian and politician (372–451)
Pei Xingjianb. 619CNnot in their usual nameTang dynasty person CBDB = 31906
Bui Thi Xuanb. 1752VNnot in their usual name18th century Vietnamese female general during the Tây Sơn Rebellion
Pei Wenzhongb. 1904CNnot in their usual nameChinese paleontologist and paleoanthropologist (1904–1982)
Bui Tinb. 1927VNnot in their usual nameVietnamese soldier, political dissident and defector (1927–2018)
Pei Encaib. 1953CNnot in their usual nameChinese footballer
Carl Peib. 1989SEnot in their usual nameSwedish entrepreneur
Bùi Tiến Dũngb. 1997VNnot in their usual nameVietnam 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).

How to address them

InformalHi Pui,

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

30 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 16 countries.

Official registers attesting Pui
Country	Register	Year	Count	Rank
IN India	Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls	—	215	#2,188
IN India	Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls	—	68	#36,545
US United States	wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.)	—	—	—

Reference works 3

Dictionary of American Family Names
Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Pui mean, and where does it come from?: a Chinese Indonesian surname from Cantonese. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Pui?: In Malay /pui/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
Is Pui a male or female name?: Pui 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 as female; Netherlands (Meertens NVB): listed as female; Finland (DVV): listed under both sexes. We don't publish a percentage split.
In which country does Pui have the most bearers?: Mondonomo estimates about 19 thousand people named Pui in Malaysia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pui.
How common is the name Pui?: In the United States, the national register counted 1,199 people named Pui in 2020, about 1 in 277 thousand residents.
How common is Pui compared with other names?: In Malaysia, Pui is the 711th most common given name of 388,685 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Pui?

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/pui

The 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 2026-10-13 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, “Pui” — the 711th most common given name in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Pui parses inside a full name →