Mays
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Mays is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Belize it is the 3rd most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: * As an English surname, variant of Mayes. * As a German surname, variant of Mais. * As a Dutch surname, from a short form of Thomas.
- USUnited States1 in 8.2K◐
- CACanada1 in 16K
- GBUnited Kingdom1 in 18K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈41K ●
- Sources
- 412 ●
- 1 in 8.2K ◐
across 8 countries
375K records
Official registry-verified
United States
Meaning & origin●
* As an English surname, variant of Mayes. * As a German surname, variant of Mais. * As a Dutch surname, from a short form of Thomas.
Sources 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #758 | 40,408 | 330K rec. | 1 in 8.2K | 40K | Mays | 412 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 13,197 | 13K rec. | — | listed | Mays | 119 |
| CA Canada | — | 4,620 | 4.7K rec. | — | 1 | Mays | 64 |
| AU Australia | — | 4,352 | 4.4K rec. | — | — | Mays | 81 |
| DE Germany | — | 1,778 | 1.8K rec. | — | — | Mays | 62 |
| IT Italy | — | 1,554 | 1.6K rec. | — | 1 | Mays | 15 |
| RU Russia | — | 966 | 993 rec. | — | — | Mays | 17 |
| JM Jamaica | #154 | 916 | 951 rec. | — | — | Mays | 4 |
| NZ New Zealand | #737 | 781 | 787 rec. | — | — | Mays | 20 |
| BZ Belize | #3 | 605 | 1.4K rec. | — | — | Mays | 3 |
| PK Pakistan | — | 595 | 636 rec. | — | listed | Mays | 4 |
| AT Austria | — | 153 | 161 rec. | — | 3 | Mays | 9 |
Roughly 40K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 8.2K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English364K86%
- Spanish16K4%
- 10K2%
- German4.5K1%
- French3.9K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 363,754 | 86% |
| Spanish | 15,950 | 4% |
| 9,957 | 2% | |
| German | 4,459 | 1% |
| French | 3,921 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Mays 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.
In Portuguese, obsolete spelling of mais
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latin, corn (Zea mays)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In fro, May (month)
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.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1922 | 5 |
| 1963 | 5 |
| 2006 | 5 |
| 2010 | 6 |
| 2011 | 7 |
| 2012 | 7 |
| 2013 | 5 |
| 2014 | 7 |
| 2015 | 8 |
| 2016 | 12 |
| 2017 | 6 |
| 2018 | 10 |
| 2019 | 10 |
| 2020 | 10 |
| 2021 | 12 |
| 2022 | 5 |
| 2023 | 10 |
| 2024 | 11 |
| 2025 | 11 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 19 years between 1922–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Carl Maysb. 1891USAmerican baseball player
- Raymond Maysb. 1899GBBritish racing driver (1899-1980)
- Willie Maysb. 1931USAmerican baseball player (1931–2024)
- Lyle Maysb. 1953USAmerican jazz musician (1953–2020)
- Billy Maysb. 1958USEuropean-American salesperson (1958–2009)
- Jefferson Maysb. 1965USAmerican actor
- Joe Maysb. 1975USAmerican baseball player
- Daniel Maysb. 1978GBBritish actor
- Jayma Maysb. 1979USAmerican actress
- Tristin Maysb. 1990USAmerican actress
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●
Attested in 45 sources across 23 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 40K | #854 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 39K | #875 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 39K | #809 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 385 | #19,762 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 146 | #19,762 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 100 | #8,517 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 96 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2019 | 94 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2018 | 90 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2017 | 80 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2016 | 68 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2015 | 61 | — |
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
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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 2026-09-12 data build · 113 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Mays?
- We estimate roughly 41 thousand people bear Mays (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
- In which country does Mays have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 40 thousand people bear Mays in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled mays.
- How common is Mays compared with other names?
- In the United States, Mays is the 758th most common surname of 7,257,200 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Mays mean?
- Recorded meaning: * As an English surname, variant of Mayes. * As a German surname, variant of Mais. * As a Dutch surname, from a short form of Thomas.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/maysThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
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, “Mays” — the 758th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.