Ruby

At the 2020 census, 8,747 Americans bore the surname Ruby — 3,938th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 34,200.

By the numbers

People: 8,747
Rank: 3,938th
How common: 1 in 34,200
Per 100,000: 2.9

Where the name comes from

The female name derives from ruby in the 19th century. The programming language was named after the gemstone.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 86.1%
Hispanic or Latino 6.6%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.7%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.7%
Black, not Hispanic 1.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.4%

Notable people called Ruby

Harry Ruby (1895–1974)American composer and screenwriter
Ruby (born 1972)American pornographic actress

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

Surnames like Ruby

Also a first name

Ruby has been given to 379,684 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1924. 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.