Raya
loc · Latin script
Meaning: flow of a river; zeal; ardour; quickness; force; velocity
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Raya is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country.
- INIndia1 in 387as Ray(measured from records)
- ESSpain1 in 6.5K
- CACanada≈1 in 50K
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 Raya 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.
- India (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 227 (measured from records)
- 1 in 6.5K (inferred from the name graph)
3,425,366 named Ray
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Spain
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Rayi in IN India, 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)
flow of a river; zeal; ardour; quickness; force; velocity. king; prince.
Sources 1
- The Penguin book of Hindu names for boys
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Raya 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | 3,425,366as Ray | 1 in 387 | 3.4M | Rayi | 39 |
| US United States | 133,171as Ray | 1 in 2.5K | 176K | Rayi | 227 |
| ES Spain | 7,684 | 1 in 6.5K | 7.7K | Raya | 136 |
| CH Switzerland | 1,041as Roy | 1 in 8.1K | 1K | — | 5 |
| CA Canada | ≈750 est. | ≈1 in 50K | 31 | — | 20 |
| GD Grenada | 18as Ray | 1 in 6.3K | 104 | — | — |
3,425,366 people counted by Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls, counting the spelling ray. 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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. 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)
Raya is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A former territory of the mediaeval principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia held under the direct administration of the Ottoman Empire, as opposed to the principalities.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Spanish, line
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Arabic, aroma, fragrance
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
a king (P)
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
In Arabic, flag; vision
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
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)
- Raya Garbousovab. 1909USRussian-American musician (1909–1997)
- Raya Dunayevskayab. 1910USAmerican philosopher (1910-1987)
- Joseph Rayab. 1916LBRoman Catholic archbishop (1916–2005)
- Raya Jaglomb. 1919ILIsraeli activist, president of World WIZO
- Raya Meddineb. 1953USAmerican actress
- María Tamara Raya Rodríguezb. 1972ESSpanish politician
- Raya Zin Alddenb. 1988SYsport shooter
- Javier Rayab. 1991ESSpanish figure skater
- David Rayab. 1995ESSpanish association football player
- Raya SorkinILresearcher
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 87 sources across 46 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 4.3K | #4,328 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 831 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 183 | — |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 87 | #17,663 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 76 | #4,328 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 71 | #9,288 |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 31 | #122 |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2023 | 1 | #2,230 |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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
- Where does the name Raya come from?
- flow of a river; zeal; ardour; quickness; force; velocity. king; prince. Recorded by The Penguin book of Hindu names for boys.
- What does the name Raya mean?
- Recorded meaning: flow of a river; zeal; ardour; quickness; force; velocity.
- In which country does Raya have the most bearers?
- In India, the national register counted about 3.4 million people named Ray, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Raya most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Raya is densest in Spain — about 1 in 6.5 thousand people — even though India holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Raya?
- In Spain, the national register counted 7,684 people named Raya, about 1 in 6.5 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Raya?
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/rayaThe 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, “Raya”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.