Láy
surname · Latin script
Láy is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Myanmar (Burma) it is the 2nd most common surname. Recorded meaning: From Middle English leyen, leggen, from Old English leċġan (“to lay”), from Proto-West Germanic *laggjan, from Proto-Germanic *lagjaną (“to lay”), causative form of Proto-Germanic *ligjaną (“to lie, r.
- USUnited States1 in 18K(measured from records)
- UYUruguay1 in 59K
- FIFinland1 in 78K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 96 (measured from records)
- 1 in 18K (inferred from the name graph)
18,468 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Lay in MM Myanmar (Burma), US United States.
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 Englishleyen(measured from records)
- Old Englishleċġan“to lay”(measured from records)
- Proto-West Germanic*laggjan(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic*lagjaną“to lay”(measured from records)
- Proto-Indo-European*legʰ-“to lie“to lie, recline”(measured from records)
From Middle English leyen, leggen, from Old English leċġan (“to lay”), from Proto-West Germanic *laggjan, from Proto-Germanic *lagjaną (“to lay”), causative form of Proto-Germanic *ligjaną (“to lie, recline”), from Proto-Indo-European *legʰ- (“to lie, recline”). Cognate with West Frisian lizze (“to lay, to lie”), Dutch leggen (“to lay”), German legen (“to lay”), Norwegian Bokmål legge (“to lay”), Norwegian Nynorsk leggja (“to lay”), Swedish lägga (“to lay”), Icelandic leggja (“to lay”), Albanian lag (“troop, band, war encampment”).
Cited for this meaning 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
- The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Láy is found
(measured from records)Láy 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 | — | 18,468 | 1 in 18K | 19K | Lay | 96 |
| AR Argentina | — | 419 | 1 in 109K | 419 | — | — |
| ES Spain | — | 300 | 1 in 167K | 300 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | — | 107 | 1 in 79K | 107 | — | — |
| FI Finland | — | 71 | 1 in 78K | 71 | — | 1 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 57 | 1 in 59K | 57 | — | — |
| NO Norway | — | 52 | 1 in 105K | 52 | — | 2 |
| MM Myanmar (Burma) | #2 | ≈19 est. | ≈1 in 2.8M | — | Lay | 67 |
18,468 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 2020; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)Láy 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 Vietnamese, to repeat, to reiterate
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.
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Láy mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English leyen, leggen, from Old English leċġan (“to lay”), from Proto-West Germanic *laggjan, from Proto-Germanic *lagjaną (“to lay”), causative form of Proto-Germanic *ligjaną (“to lie, r… Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and 3 other sources.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Láy?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 18 thousand people named Láy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lay. After it come Argentina, Spain, Switzerland and Finland; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Láy most common?
- Láy is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 18 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Láy?
- In the United States, the national register counted 18,468 people named Láy in 2010, about 1 in 18 thousand residents.
- How common is Láy compared with other names?
- In Myanmar (Burma), Láy is the 2nd most common surname of 12,945 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Láy?
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/l%C3%A1yThe 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, “Láy” — the 2nd most common surname in Myanmar (Burma). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.