Gay

Gay is the 1,153rd most common surname in the United States, shared by 29,878 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 10,000.

By the numbers

People: 29,878
Rank: 1,153rd
How common: 1 in 10,000
Per 100,000: 10.0

Where the name comes from

Origin a nickname

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 67.3%
Black, not Hispanic 21.5%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.8%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 3.6%
Hispanic or Latino 3.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Gay

Peter Gay (1923–2015)German-American historian and author
Sophie Gay (1776–1852)French writer
Maria Gay (1879–1943)Catalan opera singer

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

Surnames like Gay

Also a first name

Gay has been given to 19,367 American babies as a first name since 1883, peaking in 1959. 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.