Lay

surname · Latin script

Meaning: habitational name from places so named, in the Rhineland near Koblenz and in Bavaria, named with lay(h), a word meaning ‘stone’, ‘rock’, ‘slate’

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/leɪ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Lay is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • SGSingapore≈1 in 1.8K(inferred from the name graph)
  • MYMalaysia≈1 in 2.3K
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 7.5K

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)

18,468 people, 2010

Sources
418 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 1.8K (inferred from the name graph)

Singapore, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

habitational name from places so named, in the Rhineland near Koblenz and in Bavaria, named with lay(h), a word meaning ‘stone’, ‘rock’, ‘slate’.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Lay 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 Lay is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—18,4681 in 18K19KLay418
MY Malaysia#472≈14,000 est.≈1 in 2.3K—Lay71
FR France—≈5,200 est.≈1 in 13K200—6
GB United Kingdom—≈3,900 est.≈1 in 17K—Lay184
SG Singapore#250≈3,500 est.≈1 in 1.8K—Lay81
AU Australia#684≈3,400 est.≈1 in 7.5K1Lay177
PA Panama—≈300 est.≈1 in 13K3——

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; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Tribunal Electoral — Boletín, postulaciones for the 5 May 2024 general election. 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)

Lay is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Burmese surname115 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Myanmar (Burma), Malaysia, United States, Singapore

    Also written Lâý, Laý, Lây, Läÿ, Lãy

  • Malay surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, United States

    Languages: Malay, Indonesian

    Also written Lầy, Ĺāý, Láÿ

  • French surname14 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Belgium, United Kingdom

    Also written Laÿ, Lây, Láy, Låy, Läy

  • Khmer surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Malaysia, Cambodia, United Kingdom

    Also written Ḷay, Lāy

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Láy, Lāy, Ḷāy

  • Portuguese surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, United States, United Kingdom, Timor-Leste

    Also written Lâý, Lây, Läÿ, Lày, Lầy

73 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)

Lay 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, To place down in a position of rest, or in a horizontal position.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In English, Different forms of Lee.

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

  • New name instead of Seligmann or Liebmann, Phorzheim area. Lay instead of Levi, in Ettenheim, Mahlberg area, Baden 1809.

    as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History

  • In English, v.. nda = la; lay hold on, gbinde; lay upon, pele, mala; lay a wager, ngua

    as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language

  • In English, habitational name from places so named in Loire, Meurthe-et-Moselle, and Pyrenees-Atlantique.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family 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)

16001700180019002000Benjamin Lay, b. 1682Wilhelm August Lay, b. 1862Charles Downing Lay, b. 1877Dilys Laye, b. 1934Humberto Lay, b. 1934Sam Lay, b. 1935Marion Lay, b. 1948Jeffrey Lay, b. 1969Caren Lay, b. 1972Kirsti Lay, b. 1988

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)

FormalDear Lay,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 46 sources across 24 countries.

Official registers attesting Lay
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202019K#1,896
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201018K#1,957
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200018K#1,832
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1981255—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1991200—
PA PanamaTribunal Electoral — Boletín, postulaciones for the 5 May 2024 general election20243#634
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 5

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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 Lay mean, and where does it come from?
habitational name from places so named, in the Rhineland near Koblenz and in Bavaria, named with lay(h), a word meaning ‘stone’, ‘rock’, ‘slate’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
What are other forms of the name Lay?
In the etymology graph, Layman, Lie and Laity are forms of the same name in other languages.
How do you pronounce Lay?
A machine transcription gives /leɪ/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Lay have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 18 thousand people named Lay, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lay.
How common is the name Lay?
In the United States, the national register counted 18,468 people named Lay in 2010, about 1 in 18 thousand residents.
How common is Lay compared with other names?
In Singapore, Lay is the 250th most common surname of 78,292 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Lay?

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

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, “Lay” — the 250th most common surname in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Lay parses inside a full name →