Pray

Pray is the 8,807th most common surname in the United States, shared by 3,575 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 83,600.

By the numbers

People: 3,575
Rank: 8,807th
How common: 1 in 83,600
Per 100,000: 1.2

Where the name comes from

As an Irish surname, variant of Prey, from ó Préith, a personal name from Old Irish.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 80.5%
Black, not Hispanic 9.6%
Hispanic or Latino 4.4%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.4%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Pray

György Pray (1723–1801)Hungarian Abbot and historian

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

Surnames like Pray

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.