Faý
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Faý is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 13,775 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2020. Recorded meaning: From Middle English faie, fei (“a place or person possessed with magical properties”), from Middle French feie, fée (“fairy", "fae”). More at fairy. Faý is also written ไฟ in Thai.
- GYGuyana1 in 4.4K(measured from records)
- JMJamaica≈1 in 5.5Kfew records
- AUAustralia≈1 in 6.3K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Faý itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 427 (measured from records)
- 1 in 4.4K (inferred from the name graph)
13,775 people, 2020
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Faý in other scripts: Thai
(measured from records)Locally spelled Fay in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 4 more.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)- Middle Englishfaie“a place or person possessed with magical properties”(measured from records)
- Middle Frenchfeie“fairy”(measured from records)
From Middle English faie, fei (“a place or person possessed with magical properties”), from Middle French feie, fée (“fairy", "fae”). More at fairy.
Cited for this meaning 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- Nordic Names
Attested across 26 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Faý 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #916 | 13,775 | 1 in 24K | 15K | Fay | 427 |
| GB United Kingdom | #653 | ≈9,100 est. | ≈1 in 7.6K | 3 | Fay | 204 |
| AU Australia | #601 | ≈4,300 est. | ≈1 in 6.3K | 67 | Fay | 177 |
| CA Canada | #922 | ≈3,200 est. | ≈1 in 13K | 2 | Fay | 149 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 37K | — | Fay | 37 |
| NZ New Zealand | #393 | ≈780 est. | ≈1 in 6.8K | 13 | Fay | 61 |
| JM Jamaica | #109 | ≈520 est. | ≈1 in 5.5K | — | Fay | 12 |
| GY Guyana | — | 171 | 1 in 4.4K | 171 | — | 2 |
13,775 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Faý mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English faie, fei (“a place or person possessed with magical properties”), from Middle French feie, fée (“fairy", "fae”). More at fairy. Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Wiktionary and 2 other sources.
- Is Faý a male or female name?
- Faý is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- Which countries have the most people named Faý?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 14 thousand people named Faý, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled fay. After it come United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and South Africa; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Faý most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Faý is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 4.4 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Faý?
- In the United States, the national register counted 13,775 people named Faý in 2020, about 1 in 24 thousand residents.
- How common is Faý compared with other names?
- In the United States, Faý is the 916th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Faý?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/fa%C3%BDThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
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, “Faý” — ranked 1994th in the United States (Census Bureau). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.