The history of your name

The FAY surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 14,992 2225 0.006 56
United States (1880 census) 8,502 706 0.017 170
Change since 1880 +6490 -1519 -0.011 -114
Other Countries
Australia 760 2138 0.005 46
United Kingdom 2,446 2506 0.005 53
Top States for FAY by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
New York 1,482 1192 0.008 78
Massachusetts 1,442 568 0.023 227
California 1,192 2608 0.004 35
Florida 922 2189 0.006 58
Illinois 700 1806 0.006 56
Top States for FAY by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Vermont 181 512 0.030 297
Massachusetts 1,442 568 0.023 227
Rhode Island 191 745 0.018 182
New Hampshire 224 846 0.018 181
Maine 153 1561 0.012 120

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

Classification and Origin of FAY

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Ireland

Language of origin: Gaelic

Ethnic origin: Celtic

Religious origin: Christian

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

Classification Total Percent
White (Hispanic) 310 2.07
Black/African American 304 2.03
Mixed Race 199 1.33
Asian/Pacific 123 0.82
Native American/Alaskan 63 0.42
White (Caucasian) 13,992 93.33

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

Meaning of FAY in historical publications

(origin: Spanish.) Fe, faith. In Normandy, plantations of beech were called Faye, Fayel, and Fautlaie.

Arthur, William (1857) An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names. New York: Sheldon, Blakeman. Public Domain.


Similar names to FAY

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as FAY.

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 FAY

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