Kay

At the 2020 census, 22,730 Americans bore the surname Kay — 1,538th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 13,100.

By the numbers

People: 22,730
Rank: 1,538th
How common: 1 in 13,100
Per 100,000: 7.6

Where the name comes from

Origin Middle English

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 82.6%
Black, not Hispanic 4.9%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 4.7%
Hispanic or Latino 3.9%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Kay

Alan Kay (born 1940)American computer scientist
Robbie Kay (born 1995)British actor
Guy Gavriel Kay (born 1954)Canadian author of fantasy fiction
Jay Kay (born 1969)English musician
John Kay (1704–1779)British inventor
Seneb Kay (1700 BC–1700 BC)Egyptian pharaoh of the SIP
Jackie Kay (born 1961)Scottish poet and novelist
Crystal Kay (born 1986)Japanese singer, songwriter, actress and radio host

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

Surnames like Kay

Also a first name

Kay has been given to 102,545 American babies as a first name since 1882, peaking in 1942. 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.