Reay
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) a different form of Rye; (ii) a shortened form of McRea (Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history])
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 10 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Reay is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 23K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 41K
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 50Kfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 240 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 7.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Turks & Caicos Islands, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)(i) a different form of Rye; (ii) a shortened form of McRea
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Reay is found
(measured from records)Reay 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 23K | 5.1K | Reay | 187 |
| US United States | — | 1,133 | 1 in 294K | 1.2K | Reay | 240 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈670 est. | ≈1 in 41K | — | Reay | 93 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈560 est. | ≈1 in 74K | — | Reay | 104 |
| CO Colombia | — | ≈370 est. | ≈1 in 145K | — | Reay | 28 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 50K | — | Reay | 51 |
| TC Turks & Caicos Islands | #167 | ≈6 est. | ≈1 in 7.3K | — | Reay | 1 |
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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register). 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)- Ted Reayb. 1914GBassociation football player (1914-1992)
- Shaun Reayb. 1989GBEnglish footballer (born 1989)
- Elliot James Reayb. 2002GBBritish singer
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)17 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 10 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Reay mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) a different form of Rye; (ii) a shortened form of McRea Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Reay?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.0 thousand people named Reay in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled reay. After it come United States, Australia, Canada and Colombia; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Reay?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,133 people named Reay in 2010, about 1 in 294 thousand residents.
- How common is Reay compared with other names?
- In Turks & Caicos Islands, Reay is the 167th most common surname of 3,662 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Reay?
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/reayThe 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, “Reay” — ranked 1557th in the United Kingdom (Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.