Toye

surname · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Toye is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • NGNigeria≈1 in 48K(inferred from the name graph)
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 82K
  • USUnited States1 in 292K

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.

Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)

≈4,400 people, est.

Sources
221 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 43K (inferred from the name graph)

Belgium

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin

No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Toye 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 Toye is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
NG Nigeria≈4,400 est.≈1 in 48K—Toye42
US United States1,1401 in 292K1.1KToye221
GB United Kingdom≈800 est.≈1 in 82K913Toye125
CA Canada≈300 est.≈1 in 126K—Toye83
BE Belgium2741 in 43K274Toye28
IE Ireland≈100 est.≈1 in 51K—Toye33

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); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population 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).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Toye is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Argentina, Brazil, United Kingdom

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Toyé

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Toyé

  • Arabic surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Libya, Nigeria, Egypt

    Also written Toyé

  • Amharic surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Nigeria, Ethiopia

    Also written ቶዬ

46 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)

Toye is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In men, v., to think, to imagine: compound of to and ye. Kpandé wilu moi a to ye ndinga mia. Kina koli me nini a toye htia mia a kpawo. Ta to-te ti kila ho-moi wa. Negi ye to gbékpongo, I thought it good

    as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language

  • In Malay, alternative form of tomyam

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

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)

1850190019502000Francis Toye, b. 1883Geoffrey Toye, b. 1889Wendy Toye, b. 1917Hugh Toye, b. 1917Jennifer Toye, b. 1933John Toye, b. 1936John Toye, b. 1942Fred Toye, b. 1967Richard Toye, b. 1973Mason Toye, b. 1998

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 19 sources across 9 countries.

Official registers attesting Toye
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020001.1K#21,335
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.1K#22,543
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201K#24,895
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)2002913#7,118
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)2008274#6,089
BE BelgiumStatbel — Noms de famille (family names)—271#6,415
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 2

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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

In which country does Toye have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 4.4 thousand people named Toye in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled toye.
Where is Toye most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Toye is densest in Belgium — about 1 in 43 thousand people — even though Nigeria holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Toye?
In the United States, the national register counted 1,140 people named Toye in 2010, about 1 in 292 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Toye?

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

The same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Toye”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Toye parses inside a full name →