Ray

107,593 people in America carry this name — ranked #525 of 923.

Carried mostly by the Greatest Generation.

Say it RAY

1 syllable · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

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

  • People counted 107,593 2020 Census
  • Per 100,000 35.6 about 1 in 3,081 people
  • As a surname 130,289 ranked #219 the other way round

What Ray means and where it comes from

Reads literally as “this name may have several origins”.

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.

Ray name popularity by year

208,583 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1926, with 3,530 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 1920s.

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.

What goes well after Ray

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

Better avoided

  • Ray Robert — same opening
  • Ray Richard — same opening
  • Ray Jose — rhymes

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 and a surname

Ray is carried in front of the comma and behind it — thousands of Americans have it as a surname too.

Is Ray used for boys or for girls?

98.2% men
1,952 women

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

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Where in America Ray is thickest on the ground

In New Mexico the name is given 2.8 times as often as it is across the country.

  • New Mexico ×2.8
  • Mississippi ×1.9
  • Louisiana ×1.9
  • Arkansas ×1.7
  • Texas ×1.6

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.

Names built the same way as Ray

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.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 61.5%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 14.5%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 15.4%
  • Two or more races — 2.7%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 4.8%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 1.1%

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 Full-Name Estimator

Add a surname and see how many Americans carry the two together.

Open Full-Name Estimator 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