Dray
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ME dreЗ, dregh, ‘enduring/patient’, ‘doughty/fierce’, or ‘slow/tedious’; first attested Roger Drie 1219 P (Nf/Sf)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 15 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/dɹeɪ/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Dray is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 64K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 73K
- CACanada≈1 in 180Kfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 248 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 33K (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,100 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
France, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)ME dreЗ, dregh, ‘enduring/patient’, ‘doughty/fierce’, or ‘slow/tedious’; first attested Roger Drie 1219 P (Nf/Sf)
Cited for this meaning 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Where the surname Dray is found
(measured from records)Dray 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 33K | 333 | Dray | 6 |
| US United States | 1,835 | 1 in 181K | 1.8K | Dray | 248 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈940 est. | ≈1 in 73K | listed | Dray | 127 |
| AU Australia | ≈430 est. | ≈1 in 64K | 1 | Dray | 75 |
| CA Canada | ≈230 est. | ≈1 in 182K | 1 | Dray | 47 |
| IL Israel | ≈97 est. | ≈1 in 103K | — | Dray | 24 |
| SG Singapore | ≈42 est. | ≈1 in 143K | — | Dray | 3 |
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; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)Dray is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Any of various forms of low horse-drawn cart or wagon, often without sides or with removable sides, and used especially for heavy loads.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In lek, 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)- William Drayb. 1921CACanadian philosopher (1921–2009)
- Philip Drayb. 1950USAmerican writer
- Jim Drayb. 1986USAmerican football player and coach (born 1986)
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)25 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 15 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Dray mean, and where does it come from?
- ME dreЗ, dregh, ‘enduring/patient’, ‘doughty/fierce’, or ‘slow/tedious’; first attested Roger Drie 1219 P (Nf/Sf) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Dray?
- In English /dɹeɪ/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Dray?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.1 thousand people named Dray in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled dray. After it come United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Dray?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,835 people named Dray in 2010, about 1 in 181 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Dray?
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/drayThe 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, “Dray”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.