Kay

77,013 people in America carry this name — ranked #684 of 923.

Carried mostly by the Silent Generation.

Say it KAY

1 syllable · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

K EY1 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 77,013 2020 Census
  • Rank #684 Familiar
  • Per 100,000 25.5 about 1 in 4,304 people
  • As a surname 22,730 ranked #1,538 the other way round

What Kay means and where it comes from

Latin in origin, reading literally as “rejoicing”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

How often Kay has been given

102,270 babies were given this name since 1882. The busiest year was 1942, with 3,720 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40s 50 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1940s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names for Kay

One syllable, so a longer middle name gives the whole a rhythm.

Better avoided

  • Kay Karen — same opening
  • Kay Amy — runs together
  • Kay Kathleen — same opening

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

A name from before the war

The year most children were called Kay was 1942. Names of that age tend to come back once their owners are grandparents.

Is Kay a boy's or a girl's name?

3.0% men
74,670 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Same syllables and stress as Kay

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 1 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

Full names people carry

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Where in America Kay is thickest on the ground

In Wisconsin the name is given 4.6 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Wisconsin ×4.6
  • South Dakota ×3.8
  • Nebraska ×3.1
  • North Dakota ×3.0
  • Iowa ×3.0

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 84.8%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 6.2%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 1.7%
  • Two or more races — 1.9%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 5.0%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Try it Name Matcher

Enter a surname and hear which first names sit well with it.

The matcher is confident about clashes — rhymes, doubled sounds, colliding stresses — because those are facts about the phonemes. Ordering the names that pass is a set of rules, not a verdict on beauty.

Open Name Matcher on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Latin origin