The history of your name

The BRAY surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 34,575 923 0.013 128
United States (1880 census) 8,058 748 0.016 161
Change since 1880 +26517 -175 -0.003 -33
Other Countries
Australia 3,444 435 0.021 211
United Kingdom 11,673 510 0.025 254
Top States for BRAY by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 2,997 1173 0.009 88
Texas 2,421 1126 0.012 116
Florida 2,113 1044 0.013 132
Georgia 1,939 595 0.024 237
Kentucky 1,547 411 0.038 383
Top States for BRAY by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Kentucky 1,547 411 0.038 383
Oklahoma 1,068 437 0.031 310
Georgia 1,939 595 0.024 237
Arkansas 619 609 0.023 232
Tennessee 1,087 867 0.019 191

Notes

'A figure of zero indicates that we don't have data for this name (usually because it's quite uncommon and our stats don't go down that far). It doesn't mean that there's no-one with that name at all!

For less common surnames, the figures get progressively less reliable the fewer holders of that name there are. This data is aggregated from several public lists, and some stats are interpolated from known values. The margin of error is well over 100% at the rarest end of the table!

For less common surnames, the frequency and "per million" values may be 0 even though there are people with that name. That's because they represent less than one in a million of the population, which ends up as 0 after rounding.

It's possible for a surname to gain in rank and/or total while being less common per million people (or vice versa) as there are now more surnames in the USA as a result of immigration. In mathematical terms, the tail has got longer, with a far larger number of less common surnames.

Figures for top states show firstly the states where most people called BRAY live. This obviously tends to be biased towards the most populous states. The second set of figures show where people called BRAY represent the biggest proportion of the population. So, in this case, there are more people called BRAY in California than any other state, but you are more likely to find a BRAY by picking someone at random in Kentucky than anywhere else.

Classification and Origin of BRAY

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From given name or forename

Data for religion and/or language relates to the culture in which the BRAY surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the language spoken, or religion practised, by the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Data for ethnic origin relates to the region and country in which the BRAY surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the ethnicity of the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Ethnic distribution of BRAY in the USA

Classification Total Percent
White (Hispanic) 605 1.75
Mixed Race 560 1.62
Native American/Alaskan 284 0.82
Asian/Pacific 163 0.47
White (Caucasian) 28,721 83.07
Black/African American 4,242 12.27

Ethnic distribution data shows the number and percentage of people with the BRAY surname who reported their ethnic background as being in these broad categories in the most recent national census.

Meaning of BRAY in historical publications

BRAY. This name occurs in all the copies of the so-called Roll of Battel Abbey, and that a great family so designated migrated from Normandy at the period of the Conquest seems pretty certain. Three places in that province are still called Brai ; two in the arrondissement of Falaise,. and one in that of Bernai. But we have also at least two places called Bray in England ; one a parish in Berkshire, well knovra for its time-serving ecclesiastic, who amidst all the fluctuations of creeds in the XVI. century, made it his ruling principle " to live and die vicar of Bray ;" the other, an estate in the parish of St. Just, near Penzance, co. Cornwall. This latter, according to Hals, " gave name and origin to an old family of gentlemen surnamed De Bray, who held in this place two parts of a knight's fee of land 3. Hen. IV. I take the Lord Bray of Hampshire to be descended from this family." D. Gilbert's Cornwall, ii. 282. As a proof of the wide diffusion of the name, it may be mentioned that the dictionaries of Heraldrj' assign more than twenty different coats of arms to it.

Lower, Mark A (1860) Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom. London: J.R. Smith. Public Domain.


Similar names to BRAY

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as BRAY.

This does not necessarily imply a direct relationship between the names, but may indicate names that could be mistaken for this one when written down or misheard.

Matches are generated automatically by a combination of Soundex, Metaphone and Levenshtein matching.

Potential typos for BRAY

The following words are slight variants of BRAY that are likely to be possible typos or misspellings in written material.