Faÿ
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Faÿ is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Middle English faie, fei (“a place or person possessed with magical properties”), from Middle French feie, fée (“fairy", "fae”). More at fairy.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 6.4K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 7.4K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 8.4K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 427 (measured from records)
- 1 in 4.4K (inferred from the name graph)
≈130,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Fay in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 4 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)
- Middle Englishfaie“a place or person possessed with magical properties”(measured from records)
- Middle Frenchfeie“fairy”(measured from records)
From Middle English faie, fei (“a place or person possessed with magical properties”), from Middle French feie, fée (“fairy", "fae”). More at fairy.
Sources 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- Nordic Names
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Faÿ 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Fay | 32 |
| US United States | #916 | 13,775 | 1 in 24K | 15K | Fay | 427 |
| GB United Kingdom | #653 | ≈7,900 est. | ≈1 in 8.4K | 3 | Fay | 204 |
| AU Australia | #601 | ≈4,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.4K | 67 | Fay | 177 |
| CA Canada | #922 | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 2 | Fay | 149 |
| NZ New Zealand | #393 | ≈660 est. | ≈1 in 7.4K | 13 | Fay | 61 |
| JM Jamaica | #109 | ≈510 est. | ≈1 in 5.6K | — | Fay | 12 |
| GY Guyana | — | 171 | 1 in 4.4K | 171 | — | 2 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Bernard Faÿb. 1893FRFrench historian (1893–1978)
- Emmanuel Faÿb. 1897FRFrench musician, painter and critic
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 1 country.
Reference works 1
- 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 Faÿ mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English faie, fei (“a place or person possessed with magical properties”), from Middle French feie, fée (“fairy", "fae”). More at fairy. Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Wiktionary and 2 other sources.
- In which country does Faÿ have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 132 thousand people named Faÿ in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled fay.
- Where is Faÿ most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Faÿ is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 4.4 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Faÿ?
- In the United States, the national register counted 13,775 people named Faÿ in 2020, about 1 in 24 thousand residents.
- How common is Faÿ compared with other names?
- In Jamaica, Faÿ is the 109th most common given name of 21,568 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Faÿ?
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/fa%C3%BFThe 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, “Faÿ” — the 109th most common given name in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.