Háy

surname · Latin script

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

Háy is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Middle English hey, from Old English hīeġ, from Proto-West Germanic *hawi, from Proto-Germanic *hawją (compare West Frisian hea, Dutch hooi, German Heu, Norwegian høy), from *hawwaną (“to hew, cu.

rarermore common
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 4.4K(inferred from the name graph)
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 4.8K
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 6.7K

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)

18,029 people, 2010

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
429 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 4.4K (inferred from the name graph)

New Zealand, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

HáyLatin(measured from records)
헤이Hangul(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Hay in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 3 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)

Derivation of Háy: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Háy
  1. Middle Englishhey(measured from records)
  2. Old Englishhīeġ(measured from records)
  3. Proto-West Germanic*hawi(measured from records)
  4. Proto-Germanic*hawjącompare West Frisian hea(measured from records)
  5. Proto-Germanic root*hawwaną“to hew“to hew, cut down”(measured from records)

From Middle English hey, from Old English hīeġ, from Proto-West Germanic *hawi, from Proto-Germanic *hawją (compare West Frisian hea, Dutch hooi, German Heu, Norwegian høy), from *hawwaną (“to hew, cut down”). More at hew.

Sources 6

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Scottish Surnames
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples)
  • Wiktionary

Attested across 24 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Háy 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 Háy is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—18,0291 in 18K18KHay429
GB United Kingdom#613≈9,700 est.≈1 in 6.7KlistedHay239
AU Australia#446≈5,300 est.≈1 in 4.8K1Hay212
CA Canada#944≈3,800 est.≈1 in 10K—Hay192
FR France—≈3,500 est.≈1 in 20K414—8
NZ New Zealand#351≈1,100 est.≈1 in 4.4K—Hay118
NO Norway—6261 in 8.7K626Hay32

18,029 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; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Háy is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Persian surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Iran

    Also written Hay, Hày, Hãy, Ĥặŷ

4 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)

Háy is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Lao, adj. vermilion

    as a wordLao-English Dictionary

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)

18801900192019401960László Háy, b. 1891Gyula Háy, b. 1900János Háy, b. 1960
  • László Háyb. 1891HUHungarian economist, physician and politician (1891-1975)
  • Gyula Háyb. 1900HUHungarian playwright (1900–1975)
  • János Háyb. 1960HUHungarian writer, poet

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 2 sources across 0 countries.

Reference works 2

  • 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 Háy mean, and where does it come from?
From Middle English hey, from Old English hīeġ, from Proto-West Germanic *hawi, from Proto-Germanic *hawją (compare West Frisian hea, Dutch hooi, German Heu, Norwegian høy), from *hawwaną (“to hew, cu… Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and Scottish Surnames and 4 other sources.
In which country does Háy have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 18 thousand people named Háy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled hay.
How common is the name Háy?
In the United States, the national register counted 18,029 people named Háy in 2010, about 1 in 18 thousand residents.
How common is Háy compared with other names?
In New Zealand, Háy is the 351st most common surname of 87,225 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Háy?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/h%C3%A1y

The 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, “Háy” — the 351st most common surname in New Zealand. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Háy parses inside a full name →