Rui
From the Latin for "famous ruler". Fewer than 150 people in Poland carry it, split across women and men and leaning male: a name most Poles have never met.
Rui Pronunciation
Rui is pronounced ROO-ee (/ˈrui/).
What Rui means
Where Rui comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Rui comes from Latin, and the meaning fastened to it is "famous ruler." That reading belongs to an old family of names built from words for renown and rule. Rui sits at the short end of that family. Three letters, one breath.
The same three letters lead a second life in Japan, where Rui is a given name in its own right, read and written without any reference to the Latin line. So one small name holds two addresses. A European root supplies the meaning "famous ruler," while the sound feels at home far to the east.
On a Polish class register, Rui would stand between Maja and Franek, brief enough that no teacher stumbles over it. It fits any box on a form at the urząd. There is no diminutive to soften it and no variant to trade it for. What you get is the whole name, four sounds wide.
That plainness suits it. A child called Rui carries no spare parts, only the Latin root and the reading it hands down: famous ruler.
How many people are named Rui
1 in 194056 men in Poland is named Rui. 147 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2679 among male names.
Rui as a middle name
Rui is a first name for 147 men in Poland and a middle name for another 17, a 90/10 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 2260th, between Rufus (17) and Sneider (17).
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#2258 Rubin17
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#2259 Rufus17
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#2260 Rui17
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#2261 Sneider17
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#2262 Stawros17