The history of your name

The PAY surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 855 26761 0 3
United States (1880 census) 206 18870 0 4
Change since 1880 +649 -7891 +N/A -1
Other Countries
Australia 238 6440 0.001 15
United Kingdom 1,062 5003 0.002 23
Top States for PAY by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 145 21597 0.000 4
Utah 135 2842 0.006 60
Ohio 81 20754 0.001 7
Florida 54 37266 0.000 3
Illinois 53 33030 0.000 4
Top States for PAY by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Utah 135 2842 0.006 60
South Dakota 16 10975 0.002 21
New Hampshire 20 10234 0.002 16
Arkansas 39 8525 0.001 15
Nevada 20 15284 0.001 10

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

Classification and Origin of PAY

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Data for religion and/or language relates to the culture in which the PAY 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 PAY 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 PAY in the USA

Classification Total Percent
White (Caucasian) 680 79.53
Asian/Pacific 82 9.59
Black/African American 62 7.25
White (Hispanic) 21 2.46
Mixed Race Less than 100 Insignificant
Native American/Alaskan Less than 100 Insignificant

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

Meaning of PAY in historical publications

PAY. PAYE. See Payson, below.

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 PAY

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as PAY.

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 PAY

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