Quáy
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Quáy is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: The current spelling replaced the spelling key in the 1690s to emulate the spelling but (at least originally) not the pronunciation of the equivalent modern French quai.
- UYUruguay1 in 106K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 297K
- BEBelgium1 in 12M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. 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
- 19 (measured from records)
- 1 in 106K (inferred from the name graph)
1,120 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Quay in US United States, GB United Kingdom.
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 Englishkay(measured from records)
- Old Frenchkay(measured from records)
- Gaulish*kagyum“enclosure”(measured from records)
- Proto-Celtic*kagyom“pen“pen, enclosure”(measured from records)
- Proto-Indo-European*kagʰyóm“enclosure”(measured from records)
The current spelling replaced the spelling key in the 1690s to emulate the spelling but (at least originally) not the pronunciation of the equivalent modern French quai. From Middle English kay, key, kaye, keye, from Old French kay, cail, from Gaulish *kagyum, cagiíun (“enclosure”), from Proto-Celtic *kagyom (“pen, enclosure”) (compare Welsh cae (“field”)), from Proto-Indo-European *kagʰyóm (“enclosure”). Doublet of hedge.
Cited for this meaning 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Quáy 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 | 1,120 | 1 in 297K | 1.2K | Quay | 19 |
| UY Uruguay | 32 | 1 in 106K | 32 | — | — |
| BE Belgium | 1 | 1 in 12M | 1 | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | — | — | 56 | Quay | 7 |
| FR France | — | — | 14 | — | 1 |
1,120 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register). 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 Quáy mean, and where does it come from?
- The current spelling replaced the spelling key in the 1690s to emulate the spelling but (at least originally) not the pronunciation of the equivalent modern French quai. Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Wiktionary.
- Is Quáy a male or female name?
- Quáy 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.
- In which country does Quáy have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.1 thousand people named Quáy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled quay.
- Where is Quáy most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Quáy is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 106 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Quáy?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,120 people named Quáy in 2010, about 1 in 297 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Quáy?
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/qu%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, “Quáy”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.