Mei (美) in Mandarin Chinese means "beautiful." Written with the character 梅 it means "plum blossom" — the first flower of spring in Chinese tradition, blooming while snow still covers the ground, and a symbol of perseverance and quiet beauty.
Mei is among the most common girl names in mainland China and has been for centuries. In the West it has been used quietly in the Chinese diaspora and is now appearing more broadly.
Mei does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Mei reduce to 9, The Giver. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.