Jay

10,302 people in the United States were counted with the surname Jay in the 2020 census, making it the 3,393rd most common in the country. That is about one person in 29,000.

By the numbers

People: 10,302
Rank: 3,393rd
How common: 1 in 29,000
Per 100,000: 3.5

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 Jay described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 72.6%
Black, not Hispanic 11.0%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 5.8%
Hispanic or Latino 4.7%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.2%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.7%

Notable people called Jay

John Jay (1745–1829)Founding Father, U.S. Chief Justice from 1789 to 1795
Bailey Jay (born 1988)American pornographic actress
Vincent Jay (born 1985)French biathlete
Tony Jay (1933–2006)British actor
Jam Master Jay (1965–2002)American hip hop musician
Ricky Jay (1946–2018)American magician and actor
Sara Jay (born 1977)American pornographic actress
Allan Jay (1931–2023)British fencer

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

Surnames like Jay

Jaynes
Jayne

Also a first name

Jay has been given to 198,132 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1960. 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.