Hayes
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Person from a place called Hayes, ‘enclosures’ or ‘brushwood’; or ‘son of Hay’; or from Irish Gaelic 6 hAodha, descendant of Aodh ‘fire’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Hayes is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Ireland it is the 53rd most common surname.
- IEIreland≈1 in 979(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 1.5K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 1.5K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #384 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 568 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 623 (inferred from the name graph)
≈790,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
North Korea, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
Person from a place called Hayes, ‘enclosures’ or ‘brushwood’; or ‘son of Hay’; or from Irish Gaelic 6 hAodha, descendant of Aodh ‘fire’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Hayes 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 | — | ≈790,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Hayes | 42 |
| US United States | #83 | 194,246 | 1 in 1.7K | 194K | Hayes | 568 |
| GB United Kingdom | #100 | ≈44,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 3 | Hayes | 291 |
| KP North Korea | #55 | ≈41,000 est. | ≈1 in 623 | — | Hayes | 4 |
| IT Italy | #137 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.2K | 1 | Hayes | 43 |
| AU Australia | #96 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 1 | Hayes | 251 |
| IE Ireland | #53 | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 979 | — | Hayes | 150 |
| NZ New Zealand | #86 | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 27 | Hayes | 121 |
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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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)
Hayes is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, dweller by the brushwood (OE); first attested Hugh de la Heise 1197 Eynsham (O)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Rutherford Birchard, I9th US
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, president
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Irish, This name is very numerous in Munster. It is usually an anglicized form of Ó hAodha. Septs of that name belong to the counties indicated in Map. In Co. Wexford Hayes is Norman, i.e. la Heise or de la Haye as in England. IF Map Donegal, Mayo, Meath, Monaghan and Tyrone. See also O'Hea
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
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)
- Rutherford B. Hayesb. 1822USpresident of the United States from 1877 to 1881 (1822-1893)
- Helen Hayesb. 1900USAmerican actress (1900–1993)
- Patricia Hayesb. 1909GBBritish actress (1909–1998)
- Alfred Hayesb. 1911GBBritish screenwriter, television writer, novelist, and poet (1911-1985)
- John Michael Hayesb. 1919USAmerican screenwriter (1919-2008)
- Billie Hayesb. 1924USAmerican actress (1924-2021)
- Isaac Hayesb. 1942USAmerican musician and actor (1942-2008)
- Elvin Hayesb. 1945USAmerican basketball player (born 1945)
- Carey Hayesb. 1961USAmerican film producer
- Sean Hayesb. 1970USAmerican actor (born 1970)
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 50 sources across 29 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 194K | #127 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 187K | #117 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 186K | #133 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- 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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Hayes mean, and where does it come from?
- Person from a place called Hayes, ‘enclosures’ or ‘brushwood’; or ‘son of Hay’; or from Irish Gaelic 6 hAodha, descendant of Aodh ‘fire’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Hayes have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 791 thousand people named Hayes in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled hayes.
- How common is the name Hayes?
- In the United States, the national register counted 194,246 people named Hayes in 2010, about 1 in 1.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Hayes compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Hayes is the 53rd most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Hayes?
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/hayesThe 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, “Hayes” — the 53rd most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.