Fay
Fay reached its high-water mark in 1926 at number 243, and has been recorded 36,177 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 3,780th. About 10,000 Fays are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 72.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Fay boys named Fay
Girls and boys called Fay
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Fay crossed from boys to girls in 1881, and has stayed there for 130 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 100% girls, which is roughly where it still is.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 131 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 36,177
- Estimated living today
- 10,000
- Median age today
- 72
- Peak year
- 1926
- Best rank
- 243rd
- Rank in 2025
- 3,780th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 32,059 / 4,118
How old the living Fays are
born that year still alive today
Of the 36,177 babies given the name since 1880, about 10,000 are alive — 28 in every hundred. Roughly 590 of them are children and 7,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1953 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Notable Fays
- Fay Bainter (1893–1968)American actress
- Fay Wray (1907–2004)actress
- Fay Weldon (1931–2023)British writer
- Fay McKenzie (1918–2019)American actress
- Fay Ajzenberg-Selove (1926–2012)American nuclear physicist
- Fay Compton (1894–1978)English actress
- Fay Kanin (1917–2013)American screenwriter, playwright and producer
- Fay Coyle (1933–2007)Northern Irish footballer
People named Fay with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Fay is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Fay is most concentrated in Arkansas (3.1×), Hawaii (2.0×), Oklahoma (1.9×), Pennsylvania (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1926
The most popular girls’ names the year Fay peaked:
Fay elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Fay | 1,087 | 368th |
| Belgium girls | Fay | 539 | 237th |
| Scotland girls | Fay | 148 | 290th |
| Switzerland girls | Fay | 93 | 711th |
| Ireland girls | Fay | 61 | 398th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Fay | 7 | 316th |
| France girls | Fay | 5 | 5,922nd |
| Poland girls | Fay | 2 birth registrations | 721st |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Fay: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Fay | 87 | 0.007% | 518th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Fay | 3 | 0.001% | 577th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Fay | 3 | 0.005% | 156th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Fay is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.01% of children were given it – 32 of them.
Fay: rank by region
In 2025, Fay was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Fay | 303 | 18 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Fay appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (138th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Fay among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Fay | 2,993 | 4,071 |
| Finland girls | Fay | 21 | 52 |
| the Netherlands boys | Fay | — | 12 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Fay against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.