Gaye
Gaye reached its high-water mark in 1960 at number 610, and has been recorded 5,746 times in all. It has not appeared in the national data since 1976. About 4,000 Gayes are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 69.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Gaye
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 5,746
- Estimated living today
- 4,000
- Median age today
- 69
- Peak year
- 1960
- Best rank
- 610th
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1909
How old the living Gayes are
born that year still alive today
Of the 5,746 babies given the name since 1909, about 4,000 are alive — 70 in every hundred. Roughly 0 of them are children and 2,800 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1956 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.
Where the name comes from
Origin English
Spelling variant of Gay.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Where Gaye is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Gaye is most concentrated in Oklahoma (2.3×), Texas (2.1×), Michigan (2.0×), Missouri (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1960
The most popular girls’ names the year Gaye peaked:
Gaye elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Gaye | 285 | 1,905th |
| France girls | Gaye | 20 | 5,186th |
| Belgium girls | Gaye | 7 | 902nd |
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.
Gaye: rank by region
In 1998, Gaye was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Gaye | 640 | 6 |
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.
Related names
Gaye 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.