Loi (surname)


Loi is a surname. It has various origins, including as a spelling of three Chinese surnames, an Italian surname from Sardinia or Sicily, and a surname in India from the word loi meaning "outcast" in the Meitei language.

Origins

Loi may be the spelling of three Chinese surnames, based on their pronunciation in different varieties of Chinese; they are listed below by their spelling in Hanyu Pinyin, which reflects the Mandarin Chinese pronunciation:
The Chinese surname meaning "thunder" is spelled in Vietnamese as Lôi.
Loi is also a surname found in Manipur, India, from the word loi meaning "outcast" in the Meitei language.
As an Italian surname, Loi appears to have originated as a shortened form of some given name, possibly the Sardinian Balloe, or the Sicilian Aloi.
Loi may also be a Greek surname.

Statistics

In Italy, 2,716 families bore the surname Loi, with 2,061 located in Sardinia, but only 10 located in Sicily.
According to statistics cited by Patrick Hanks, there were 282 people on the island of Great Britain and one on the island of Ireland with the surname Loi as of 2011. There was one person with the surname Loi on the island of Great Britain in 1881.
The 2010 United States Census found 1,357 people with the surname Loi, making it the 19,814th-most-common name in the country. This represented an increase from 985 in the 2000 Census. In both censuses, slightly fewer than nine-tenths of the bearers of the surname identified as Asian, and between six and eight per cent as White. It was the 1,056th-most-common surname among respondents to the 2000 Census who identified as Asian.

People