The Lai surname (来 / 來)
Lai (来 / 來, Lái) is about 0.1 million people in mainland China (2013), the 326th most common surname; the province with the most Lais is Zhejiang.
How do you pronounce the surname 来?
As a surname, 来 is pronounced Lái in Mandarin (written Lai without tone marks).
How is Lai written in Chinese?
Simplified Chinese: 来. Traditional Chinese (Taiwan, Hong Kong, most overseas genealogies): 來.
How common is the Lai surname?
According to Yuan Yida and Qiu Jiaru's study of the 400 most common Chinese surnames (2013), about 0.1 million people in mainland China are named Lai — 0.011% of the population, ranking 326th.
Where in China is the Lai surname most common?
According to the same 2013 study, the province with the most people named Lai is Zhejiang.
What are the other English spellings of Lai?
The same Chinese surname is spelled differently by region and era — check all of them when searching immigration or overseas records:
- Hanyu Pinyin (Mainland China): Lai
- Wade–Giles (Taiwan, older usage): Lai
- Cantonese (Hong Kong, overseas): Jyutping loi4
- Vietnamese: Lai
How do I build a Lai family tree?
Start with your own branch: record the ancestors you are sure of, then parents, siblings and descendants, generation by generation, with dates, spouses, migrations and burial places. Then invite relatives to fill in their own branches.
The KinTraces genealogy workbench lets a family build a Lai genealogy together online — relatives claim their own entries, adoptions and dual heirship are recorded on both sides, every change is logged, and the tree can be printed as a traditional Chinese genealogy (vertical register, Su or Ou style, pagoda chart) or a Western Register / Pedigree, or exported as GEDCOM.
What are Lai generation names (zibei)?
Many Chinese lineages share a generation poem: each generation takes one character from it in their given names, so cousins of the same generation share a character. Different Lai branches use different poems — there can be dozens for one surname — so a poem from another branch cannot simply be borrowed.
The most reliable source is your branch's own genealogy; otherwise, collect names from elders, gravestones and ancestral halls, look for the shared character in each generation, and compare with genealogies from the same ancestral place.
Surnames ranked nearby
Other common surnames in Zhejiang
Sources: 2013 population figures, ranks and top provinces from Yuan Yida and Qiu Jiaru, The 400 Most Common Chinese Surnames (2013), as compiled in the English Wikipedia article "List of common Chinese surnames" (CC BY-SA 4.0); 2020 ranks from the Ministry of Public Security's 2020 national name report; Baijiaxing order from the Wikisource text.