Gray
At the 2020 census, 241,208 Americans bore the surname Gray — 89th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 1,239.
By the numbers
- People
- 241,208
- Rank
- 89th
- How common
- 1 in 1,239
- Per 100,000
- 80.7
Where the name comes from
Origin a nickname
As an English, Irish, Scottish, and Norman surname, from the placename Graye-sur-Mer in Calvados, from Latin Graecus (“Greek”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Who bears the name
How people with the surname Gray described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:
Notable people called Gray
- John Edward Gray (1800–1875)British zoologist
- Thomas Gray (1716–1771)English poet and classical scholar
- Henry Gray (1827–1861)British anatomist
- George Robert Gray (1808–1872)English ornithologist, author and museum curator
- Macy Gray (born 1967)American singer
- Asa Gray (1810–1888)American botanist
- Conan Gray (born 1998)American singer-songwriter
- Catriona Gray (born 1994)Miss Universe 2018
People named Gray with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Surnames like Gray
Also a first name
Gray has been given to 5,842 American babies as a first name since 1885, peaking in 2023. 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.