Given name & surname · also Chinese

Yee

Yee is a surname from Cantonese, ultimately from Hokkien. It is used in English, Tagalog, and Cebuano.

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Meaning & origin

Where it comes from

Yee comes from Cantonese, and ultimately from Hokkien.

Adapted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How it developed

From Cantonese 余 (jyu⁴), from Taishanese 余 (yi³), from Hokkien 余 (Î), from Cantonese 爾 (ji⁵).

Adapted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The story

Published U.S. birth records include this spelling as early as 1880. This is the earliest published observation available here, rather than a date for the name’s origin.

From dated birth records

Yee through the years

Babies since 1880: 483; 281 boys · 202 girls
Most popular year: 1990; 32 babies
2025: 0; Outside the ranked list
2021–25 vs 2016–20: —; Too few births to compare

Boys Girls

Yee in U.S. Social Security birth records, 1880–2025, per million births of each sex. Years with fewer than five births for a sex are not published and appear as zero. Use the arrow keys to step through years.

By the numbers

The most recent published U.S. birth count for boys is 9 in 2000. Later missing counts do not mean the name went unused. Published U.S. population figures for this spelling include 2,418 as a first name in 2020; 19,997 as a surname in 2020.

From Social Security birth records and U.S. Census name counts for this exact spelling. Other spellings are counted separately.

Yee’s family of names

Walk Yee’s family in the name graph

The ring: across languages.

Hover or tab through the constellation to see how each name is related. Bigger dots are names more people in the U.S. share.

Across languages 3

Equivalents and cognates in other languages, plus older forms it grew from.

Similar names

If you love Yee, these share its style, era, origin or sound, from outside its own family.

Chinese

Sibling ideas

Names that share Yee’s feel without repeating its first letter or rhyming with it.

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Yee