Ray was originally a short form of Raymond, but is in use as an independent given name since at least the 19th century. Until the 1930s, it was also given to girls considerably more often than today.
Ray is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
The name Ray isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Ray ranks 685. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 2 were named Ray. In the entire USA, approximately 191,658 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Ray. That is 0.06 % of all living Americans.
Ray was originally a short form of Raymond, but is in use as an independent given name since at least the 19th century. Until the 1930s, it was also given to girls considerably more often than today.
The name Raymond comes... from the Germanic name Raginmund, composed of 'regin' for 'advice, counsel' and 'munt' for 'protection'.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Ray is a staple in the country: Boys have been given the name Ray for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Therefore, Ray is one of the 442 boys' names, that have been given to newborn sons every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Ray is a very special name that peaked in popularity over 100 years ago in the 19th century, ranking in the top 100 boys' names in our SmartGenius first name statistics: Placed at #45 Ray has never been more popular than back in 1891.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Ray was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
As many as 360 babies were named Ray in the USA in 2022, ranking it #678 on the list of the most popular boys' names for that year. However, it experienced its lowest point of popularity in 2021, when it was only ranked at #738 of all male names in our SmartGenius statistics - back then 306 boys were named Ray.
There are only 386 different male names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Ray is one of them. However, Ray is not equally widespread in all states, but people in West Virginia seem to particularly fancy this name – the 3,867 men called Ray who live here are 0,252% of all male residents and push their name up to #87 in our SmartGenius statistics, easily placing it in the top 100 most common male names in West Virginia. If you look at all the states in the USA together, you can currently find as many as 191,658 people with the name Ray. Across all regions and age groups, this lands Ray on position 175 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top male names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter R is quite common as an initial letter for boys’ names. To be precise, 5.2% of all boys' names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of boys' names, by the way, are J, A and D.
With only three letters, the name Ray is obviously very short. In fact, only 1.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly three letters. Just 0.2% of all first names are even shorter and only have two letters, while nearly 99% of all boys’ and girls’ names use more than three letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
Therefore: As 5.2% of all boys' names start with R, this initial letter occurs much more often than all 26 letters on average. And maybe interesting to know: of all the names that begin with an R, Robert is the most common.
If your name is Ray and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Ray, you can simply say:
Rocket
Apple
Yoyo
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Ray
Ray
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
R
A
Y
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
R
A
Y
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Ray sounds like this:
