The GRAY surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
	Total	Rank	Frequency %	Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot)	236,713	79	0.088	878
United States (1880 census)	59,387	61	0.119	1,188
Change since 1880	+177326	-18	-0.031	-310
Other Countries
Australia	16,622	61	0.102	1,017
United Kingdom	62,144	67	0.135	1,353

Top States for GRAY by Total
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
Texas	17,979	106	0.086	862
California	16,657	144	0.049	492
Florida	13,111	92	0.082	820
Ohio	11,071	63	0.098	975
Tennessee	8,805	60	0.155	1,548
Top States for GRAY by Frequency
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
Maine	2,976	22	0.233	2,334
Mississippi	5,358	49	0.188	1,884
Alabama	7,309	59	0.164	1,644
Tennessee	8,805	60	0.155	1,548
Arkansas	4,091	53	0.153	1,530

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

Classification and Origin of GRAY

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: Nickname

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

Classification	Total	Percent
White (Caucasian)	168,374	71.13
Black/African American	57,663	24.36
Mixed Race	3,929	1.66
White (Hispanic)	3,716	1.57
Asian/Pacific	1,042	0.44
Native American/Alaskan	1,988	0.84

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

Similar names to GRAY

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as GRAY.

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.