Ray
- Pronunciation
- [Ray]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Regal
- Origin
- French
About the Name Ray
Ray derives from the Old French rei or roy, meaning "king" or "regal," sharing its root with the modern French word roi. As a standalone given name it emerged from the longer form Raymond and related royal-root names, eventually gaining independent status during the Victorian era. The name's compact single syllable and its secondary modern resonance — the word "ray" in English also evokes beams of light — have kept it in steady use far beyond its nineteenth-century peak.
Ray appears in the US Social Security top-1000 from 1880, the first year of SSA records, and reached its highest rank of #49 in 1891. Among its notable bearers is entrepreneur Ray Kroc (born 1902), whose 1955 acquisition of a hamburger restaurant in San Bernardino, California, launched the modern McDonald's Corporation. Soul singer and pianist Ray Charles (born 1930) spent six decades producing music that became foundational to 20th-century American R&B and soul. Actor Ray Liotta (born 1954) built a four-decade career highlighted by his portrayal of Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas (1990).
Ray has remained in the SSA top-1000 continuously from 1880 through 2024 — an extraordinary record of unbroken endurance spanning over 140 years. As recently as 2024 it ranked #779 with 322 births that year. The recorded variant is Rai.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Ray
US Popularity History (1880–2025)
Annual US births named Ray by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1926 with 3,409 boys named Ray (boy rank #57 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #792 for boys (319 US births). That's 735 places below its 1926 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Ray Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Ray the strongest states are Nevada, California, Utah.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nevada | #525 | 22 |
| 2 | California | #529 | 553 |
| 3 | Utah | #606 | 63 |
| 4 | Washington | #636 | 76 |
| 5 | Arizona | #637 | 92 |
| 6 | Colorado | #655 | 31 |
| 7 | Florida | #659 | 210 |
| 8 | Massachusetts | #660 | 34 |
| 9 | Oklahoma | #690 | 18 |
| 10 | Texas | #699 | 348 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Ray in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rai | King | Male | Chamoru |
Famous People Named Ray
3 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Ray.
- Ray Charles — Soul Singer (1930)
- Ray Kroc — Entrepreneur (1902)
- Ray Liotta — Movie Actor (1954)
Looking for names like Ray?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Ray to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Ray against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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