Mai

Where Mai comes from

Chinese surname with several origins: * from Mandarin 麥 /麦 (“wheat”), * from Mandarin and Cantonese 買 /买 (maai⁵, “buy”) * Cantonese form of 米 (see Mi). * Romanized from 马 (mǎ) (see Ma) * Romanized from 梅 (méi) (see Mei) As a German surname, variant of May.
— Wiktionary's entry for Mai
  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1880
    First SSA year, and the peak
    #738 among girls with 6 babies — the first year on record, and still its best.
  2. 1882
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births.
  3. 1925
    Mai Zetterling born
    Swedish actress and film director
  4. 1980
    Mai Aizawa born
    Japanese association football player
In the dictionary
  • A female given name, a rare spelling variant of Mae/May, or borrowed from Scandinavia, with the same ultimate origin.
Namesakes
  • Mai Aizawa · Japanese association football player, born 1980
  • Mai Zetterling · Swedish actress and film director, 1925–1994
  • Mai Kuraki · Japanese J-pop singer, born 1982
  • Mai Charoenpura · Thai singer and actress, born 1969
  • Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim · German chemist, science journalist and television presenter, born 1987

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.