McKay

At the 2020 census, 36,937 Americans bore the surname McKay — 926th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 8,092.

By the numbers

People: 36,937
Rank: 926th
How common: 1 in 8,092
Per 100,000: 12.4

Where the name comes from

From Irish Mac Aodha and Scottish Gaelic MacAoidh. Related to McCoy and McGee.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 77.3%
Black, not Hispanic 13.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.1%
Hispanic or Latino 3.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.1%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.0%

Notable people called McKay

Adam McKay (born 1968)American filmmaker
Matt McKay (born 1983)Australian association football player
Claude McKay (1889–1948)Jamaican American writer, poet
Antonio McKay (born 1964)American track and field athlete
Nellie McKay (born 1982)American musician
Mike McKay (born 1964)Australian rower
David O. McKay (1873–1970)President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Christian McKay (born 1973)British actor

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

Surnames like McKay

Also a first name

McKay has been given to 2,665 American babies as a first name since 1917, peaking in 1995. 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.