Cray
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Irish Gaelic Ó Craoibhe, from a nickname meaning ‘curly-headed one’ or ‘prolific one’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kɹeɪ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Cray is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Isle of Man it is the 9th most common surname.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 76K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 80K
- USUnited States1 in 122K
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 Cray 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)
- Sources
- 281 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.1K (inferred from the name graph)
2,719 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Isle of Man, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
from Irish Gaelic Ó Craoibhe, from a nickname meaning ‘curly-headed one’ or ‘prolific one’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cray 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 | — | 2,719 | 1 in 122K | 2.7K | Cray | 281 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈820 est. | ≈1 in 80K | 4 | Cray | 111 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 184K | 1 | Cray | 6 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 76K | — | Cray | 68 |
| NO Norway | — | 316as Krey | 1 in 17K | 316 | — | 3 |
| IM Isle of Man | #9 | ≈80 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Cray | 1 |
| LB Lebanon | — | ≈74 est. | ≈1 in 74K | — | Cray | 1 |
2,719 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend). 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Cray is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, from Foots Cray, North Cray, St Mary Cray or St Paul’s Cray, Kent; first attested Gunnilda de Craie 1203 FFK
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
cendant of Craobhach’, a byname meaning ‘Curly(headed)’ or ‘Prolific’ (from craobh branch, bough).
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, A crayfish or lobster.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Chick Crayb. 1921GBEnglish cricketer (1921-2008)
- Seymour Crayb. 1925USApplied mathematician, computer scientist, and electrical engineer (1925–1996)
- Graham Crayb. 1947GBArchbishops' Missioner and Team Leader of Fresh Expressions; Bishop of Maidstone; British Anglican bishop
- Robert Crayb. 1953USAmerican blues guitarist and singer (b. 1953)
- Dianne Crayb. 1956NZNew Zealand artist (born 1956)
- Fred Crayb. 1957USAmerican photographic artist (born 1957)
- Richard Crayb. 1958USAmerican actor and singer
- Andrew Crayb. 1986USAmerican LGBT rights activist and political figure
- Eric Crayb. 1988PHFilipino-American track and field athlete
- Dorothy M. CrayGBBritish novelist
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 25 sources across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.7K | #10,689 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.7K | #11,560 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.4K | #12,545 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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 Cray mean, and where does it come from?
- from Irish Gaelic Ó Craoibhe, from a nickname meaning ‘curly-headed one’ or ‘prolific one’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Cray?
- A machine transcription gives /kɹeɪ/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Cray?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,719 people named Cray in 2010, about 1 in 122 thousand residents.
- How common is Cray compared with other names?
- In Isle of Man, Cray is the 9th most common surname of 521 surnames recorded there.
- In which country does Cray have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.7 thousand people named Cray, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cray.
What do you want to know about Cray?
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/crayThe 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, “Cray” — the 9th most common surname in Isle of Man. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.