Hoy
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: from Middle Dutch hoey ‘cargo ship’; first attested John le Hoy 1255 RH (W), Richard Hoye 1278 AssSo, Robert le Hoy 1327 SRC; metonymic for a sailor
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/hɔɪ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Hoy is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 16K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 21K
- CACanada≈1 in 23K
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 Hoy 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 377 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 16K (inferred from the name graph)
9,196 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Australia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Bayo in ES Spain, Høy in DK Denmark and Hoey in IE Ireland.
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)
from Middle Dutch hoey ‘cargo ship’; first attested John le Hoy 1255 RH (W), Richard Hoye 1278 AssSo, Robert le Hoy 1327 SRC; metonymic for a sailor
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
How Hoy is read(measured from records)
Hoy is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English81%
from Middle Dutch hoey ‘cargo ship’; first attested John le Hoy 1255 RH (W), Richard Hoye 1278 AssSo, Robert le Hoy 1327 SRC; metonymic for a sailor
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
A small coaster vessel, usually sloop-rigged, used in conveying passengers and goods, or as a tender to larger vessels in port.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish6.2%
today
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Hoy 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 | — | 9,196 | 1 in 36K | 9.5K | Hoy | 377 |
| ES Spain | — | 4,353as Bayo | 1 in 11K | 4.4K | Bayo | 16 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,200 est. | ≈1 in 21K | 3 | Hoy | 173 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Hoy | 131 |
| AU Australia | #917 | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 16K | 1 | Hoy | 138 |
| DK Denmark | #523 | 681as Høy | 1 in 8.6K | 681 | Høy | 44 |
| IE Ireland | #658 | ≈620 est. | ≈1 in 8.3K | — | Hoey | 76 |
| GL Greenland | — | 46as Høy | 1 in 1.3K | 46 | — | 3 |
9,196 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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Statistics Greenland — Surnames (NAXT1). 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)
Hoy is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
habitational name from some unidentified minor place named Hoy, or from the Orkney island of Hoy, which was named in Old Norse as Hdey, from ha ‘high’ + ey ‘island’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
metonymic occupational name for a sailor, from Middle Dutch hoey ‘cargo ship’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
nickname for a tall person, from h0j ‘high’.
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)
- William Edwin Hoyb. 1858USAmerican missionary
- Dummy Hoyb. 1862USAmerican baseball player (1862–1961)
- Robert Hoyb. 1927USAmerican actor (1927-2010)
- Renate Hoyb. 1930DEGerman actress (1930–2024)
- Maysie Hoyb. 1949USAmerican film editor and actor
- Garry Hoyb. 1954CACanadian lawyer who died when he fell from the 24th floor of his office building
- William Hoyb. 1955USAmerican film editor
- Andrew Hoyb. 1959AUAustralian equestrian
- Bettina Hoyb. 1962DEequestrian
- Chris Hoyb. 1976GBBritish racing driver and former track cyclist
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 33 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 9.5K | #3,437 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 9.2K | #3,855 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 8.7K | #3,948 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 32 | #61,136 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 32 | #60,133 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 21 | #22,461 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- 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
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 Hoy mean, and where does it come from?
- from Middle Dutch hoey ‘cargo ship’; first attested John le Hoy 1255 RH (W), Richard Hoye 1278 AssSo, Robert le Hoy 1327 SRC; metonymic for a sailor Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Hoy?
- A machine transcription gives /hɔɪ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Hoy have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 9.2 thousand people named Hoy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled hoy.
- How common is the name Hoy?
- In the United States, the national register counted 9,196 people named Hoy in 2010, about 1 in 36 thousand residents.
- How common is Hoy compared with other names?
- In Denmark, Hoy is the 523rd most common surname of 88,366 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Hoy?
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/hoyThe 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, “Hoy” — the 523rd most common surname in Denmark. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.