Lai — unisex name

What the Data Says About Lai

The Social Security Administration has registered 231 babies named Lai between 1953 and 2015, spanning 63 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Lai currently falls outside the top 1,000 girls' names for 2015. The name reached its historical peak in 1984, when 17 babies received it in a single year. Lai is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 25 additional births since 1981.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Lai performed strongest in the 1980s, accumulating 94 births during that ten-year window. Across the 7 decades of recorded activity, Lai shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in California, which accounts for 70 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by New York. In total, SSA state-level files list Lai in 2 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Lai in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 231 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.