Ayala

At the 2020 census, 91,108 Americans bore the surname Ayala — 338th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 3,281.

By the numbers

People: 91,108
Rank: 338th
How common: 1 in 3,281
Per 100,000: 30.5

Where the name comes from

Origin Spanish, from Basque

from Basque Aiara, after a town in Álvara, Basque Country.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Ayala described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

Hispanic or Latino 93.5%
White, not Hispanic 4.7%
Black, not Hispanic 0.7%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.6%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 0.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.2%

Notable people called Ayala

Roberto Ayala (born 1973)Argentine footballer
Francisco Ayala (1906–2009)Spanish novelist
Hugo Ayala (born 1987)Mexican association football player
Francisco J. Ayala (1934–2023)Spanish-American philosopher and biologist
Daniel Ayala (born 1990)Spanish association football player
Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala (1902–1948)Colombian politician
Ramón Pérez de Ayala (1880–1962)Spanish writer
Felipe Huaman Puma de Ayala (1534–1615)Incan scholar and noble

People named Ayala with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Also a first name

Ayala has been given to 1,201 American babies as a first name since 1974, peaking in 2025. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.