Cay

given name · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Cay is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In English, recorded as A small, low island largely made of sand or coral.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 651K(measured from records)
  • SESweden1 in 49K
  • FIFinland1 in 71K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

511 people, 2020

Sources
217 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 49K (inferred from the name graph)

Sweden

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

A small, low island largely made of sand or coral.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.

How Cay is read(measured from records)

Cay is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • English61%

    A small, low island largely made of sand or coral.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Vietnamese9.4%

    burning

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Spanish8.1%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Cay in Spanish.

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Cay counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Cay is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States5111 in 651K430Cay217
SE Sweden2101 in 49K210—13
PH Philippines≈160 est.≈1 in 690K—Cay37
GB United Kingdom≈100 est.≈1 in 643K—Cay58
MY Malaysia≈88 est.≈1 in 373K—Cay14
FI Finland791 in 71K116—4
NO Norway≈53 est.≈1 in 103K80—12
CH Switzerland≈37 est.≈1 in 225K56—3
IS Iceland≈2 est.≈1 in 194Klisted——

511 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); the is-skra-nofn register. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Cay is also recorded as 8 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name15 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, Peru, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Çay, Čåý, Čäÿ, Caÿ, Cãÿ

  • German given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Germany, United States, Austria, Türkiye

    Also written Çay, Cây, Cầy

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Cāy, Çay, Cây

  • French given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Türkiye, Philippines

    Also written Çay, Cày, Cây, Cãÿ

  • a separate given name13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Türkiye, Canada

    Also written Çay, Cậy, Cảy, Cầy, Cấy

  • Turkish surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium

    Languages: Turkish, Chinese

    Also written Çay, Cấy, Çäÿ, Çầÿ, Çày

  • Hindi given name8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Türkiye

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Çay, Cấy, Cầy, Cây

  • Finnish given name7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland, Sweden

    Also written Cây, Cầy, Çay

45 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Cay is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Khmer, 1_ n. louse, flea. (Vn. ch%.) 2 . som etim es used in place of ^UCu ‘ to be s a t i s f i e d ; ’ MSCu ‘ to be unable to think of a w a y . ’ (poet.) (arch.) (Th. C a j ‘heart, sp ir it .’) cnnjIQJ head -lo use . cn'[ntn crocodile parasite. cn^S body-louse. ftJtG dog flea or louse. fu^ w ood-louse. EuPlfL] chigger. tui^S

    as a wordHeadley, Cambodian-English Dictionary, Volume I (ក-ភ)

  • abbreviation of Cayman Islands

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In ses, iron oxide, rust

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In ncn, blood

    as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

18001850190019502000Cay Lorenz von Brockdorff, b. 1844Cay Diedrich Lienau, b. 1867Cay Lembcke, b. 1885Cay Sundström, b. 1902Cay von Brockdorff, b. 1915Cay Kristiansen, b. 1925Cay Karlsson, b. 1945David Cay Johnston, b. 1948Cay Süberkrüb, b. 1954Cay Rademacher, b. 1965

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 34 sources across 17 countries.

Official registers attesting Cay
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020430#20,273
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—210#5,050
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—116#2,743
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)1999110—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2003109—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2000109—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2001108—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2004107—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2002107—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2005106—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2006104—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2018103—

Reference works 3

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Cay mean, and where does it come from?
A small, low island largely made of sand or coral. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
Is Cay a male or female name?
Cay is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
In which country does Cay have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 511 people named Cay, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cay.
Where is Cay most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Cay is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 49 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Cay?
In the United States, the national register counted 511 people named Cay in 2020, about 1 in 651 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Cay?

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Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/cay

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Cay”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Cay parses inside a full name →