Rai

19,927 people in the United States were counted with the surname Rai in the 2020 census, making it the 1,760th most common in the country. That is about one person in 15,000.

By the numbers

People: 19,927
Rank: 1,760th
How common: 1 in 15,000
Per 100,000: 6.7

Where the name comes from

Origin India

Indian/Hindi surname, from a personal name based on the noun राजा (“king”).

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

Who bears the name

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

Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 95.5%
White, not Hispanic 2.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 1.2%
Hispanic or Latino 0.8%
Black, not Hispanic 0.4%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.1%

Notable people called Rai

Aishwarya Rai (born 1973)Indian actress
Raí (born 1965)Brazilian and French association football player
Raghu Rai (1942–2026)Indian photographer
Bina Rai (1931–2009)Indian actress
Mira Rai (born 1988)Nepalese trail runner and sky runner
Pamela Rai (born 1966)Canadian swimmer, Olympic bronze medallist
Nityanand Rai (born 1966)Indian politician

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

Surnames like Rai

Also a first name

Rai has been given to 520 American babies as a first name since 1952, 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.