Finlay
Finlay is the 10,371st most common surname in the United States, shared by 2,954 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 101,000.
By the numbers
- People
- 2,954
- Rank
- 10,371st
- How common
- 1 in 101,000
- Per 100,000
- 0.99
Where the name comes from
Origin Scottish Gaelic
Anglicized from Scottish Gaelic Fionnlagh (“fair warrior/hero”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Who bears the name
How people with the surname Finlay described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:
Notable people called Finlay
- Carlos Juan Finlay (1833–1915)Cuban physician discoverer of means of transmission of yellow fever through biological vector
- Fit Finlay (born 1958)Northern Irish professional wrestler
- Frank Finlay (1926–2016)British actor
- George Finlay (1799–1875)Scottish historian
- Don Finlay (1909–1970)British athlete and RAF officer
- Erwin Finlay-Freundlich (1885–1964)German astronomer
- Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925–2006)Scottish poet, writer, artist and gardener
- Ethan Finlay (born 1990)American soccer player
People named Finlay with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Surnames like Finlay
Also a first name
Finlay has been given to 1,306 American babies as a first name since 1918, peaking in 2015. 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.