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

Total is the total number of people with that surname.
Rank is the position in the list of names ordered by total (eg, a rank of 1 means that it's the most common name, and a rank of 10 means it's the tenth most common, etc).
Frequency is the percentage of people with that surname.
Per million people is the number of people with that surname per million of the population.

'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.