Mai

girls:

5.6k births since 1880

#2231 (61st percentile)

boys:

20 births since 1984

#4566 (0th percentile)

overall:

5.6k births since 1880

#3630 (53rd percentile)

Popularity Trends

The name Mai is the #3,630 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 5,593 recorded births since 1880. This represents the 53.1% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 53.1% of all names). For girls, it ranks #2,231 (61.0% percentile) for all time with 5,573 births since 1880. For boys, it ranks #4,566 (0.4% percentile) for all time with 20 births since 1984.

Mai has appeared in U.S. birth records since the beginning of our dataset in 1880 (since 1880 for girls and since 1984 for boys). Birth data for Mai is available in 119 out of the 144 years between 1880 and 2023 (119 years for girls and 3 years for boys). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.

The name Mai has been given almost exclusively to girls, with 99.6% of all recorded births being female.

For girls, Mai reached its peak popularity in 1989, achieving the 28.4% percentile (ranked #591) with 120 births per million. The name was most common in 1990, with 124 births per million (ranked 28.3% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2019, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Mai ranks #901 for girls (4.9% percentile) with 29 births per million, which is 23.6% of its peak share of births.

For boys, Mai reached its peak popularity in 1989, achieving the 0.7% percentile (ranked #752) with 3 births per million. The name was most common in 1985, with 5 births per million (ranked 0.6% percentile). There have been no recorded male births with this name since 1989.

This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Mai".

1880 2023 18802023

Key Statistics

Total Births
5,573
Peak Births
254
Peak Year
1989
First Recorded
1880
Peak Percentile
28.4%
Current Percentile
4.9%
Peak Rank
#591
Current Rank
#901
Female statistics
Total Births
20
Peak Births
9
Peak Year
1989
First Recorded
1984
Peak Percentile
0.7%
Current Percentile
Peak Rank
#752
Current Rank
Male statistics

How to Pronounce Mai

Our model has identified 2 different pronunciations for the name Mai. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.

Our model is 87.8% confident that Mai is pronounced as mai, which has 1 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is may, at 12.2% confidence, with 1 syllables.

1
87.8%
1
12.2%
mai (1 syllable)
Verified
87.8% confidence
M AY1

Possible Additional Pronunciations

If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Mai? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Mai. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Mai, please vote using the thumbs up button.

About Pronunciation Data

Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.

For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.

The raw pronunciations shown (like M AY1) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.

Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.

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