The history of your name

The JAY surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 9,771 3349 0.004 36
United States (1880 census) 2,430 2511 0.005 49
Change since 1880 +7341 -838 -0.001 -13
Other Countries
Australia 551 2933 0.003 34
United Kingdom 3,391 1842 0.007 74
Top States for JAY by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 1,045 2921 0.003 31
Texas 727 3069 0.003 35
Florida 713 2810 0.004 45
New York 524 3596 0.003 28
Ohio 476 2848 0.004 42
Top States for JAY by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Oklahoma 269 1720 0.008 78
Hawaii 90 1073 0.007 74
Alabama 310 2126 0.007 70
Washington 390 1838 0.007 66
Iowa 154 2468 0.005 53

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

Classification and Origin of JAY

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 JAY 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 JAY 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 JAY in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Black/African American 834 8.54
Asian/Pacific 448 4.58
White (Hispanic) 225 2.3
Mixed Race 202 2.07
Native American/Alaskan 195 2
White (Caucasian) 7,867 80.51

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

Meaning of JAY in historical publications

JAY. JAYE. A township united witli Heath, in the parish of Leiutwardiue, co. Hereford.

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 JAY

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as JAY.

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 JAY

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