Surname statistics for Clay

There are approximately 11,448 people named Clay in the UK. That makes it the 910th most common surname overall. Out of every million people in the UK, approximately 181 are named Clay.

Frequency Comparisons
TotalRankFrequency %Per million people
Great Britain
United Kingdom (current)11448910N/A181
United Kingdom (1881 census)61477120.021205
Change since 1881+5301-198-0.003-24
Other Countries
United States46264677N/A172
Australia10371591N/A63

Politics

People with the surname Clay are about as likely to be politicians as the average member of the population. When they do become politicians, they are most likely to be elected as Conservative.

As of the most recent set of elections, the political parties represented by politicians called Clay are:

  1. Conservative (2)
  2. Labour (2)
More stats for the politics nerds!

Top male forenames

John Clay
Andrew Clay
David Clay
Michael Clay
Robert Clay
Peter Clay
Richard Clay
Stephen Clay
Mark Clay
Christopher Clay
Simon Clay
Ian Clay
Paul Clay
James Clay
Jonathan Clay
William Clay
Anthony Clay
Roger Clay
Gary Clay
Timothy Clay

Top female forenames

Angela Clay
Jane Clay
Sarah Clay
Susan Clay
Nicola Clay
Beverley Clay
Kathleen Clay
Joanne Clay
Alison Clay
Jennifer Clay
Sharon Clay
Anne Clay
Rachel Clay
Rebecca Clay
Janice Clay
Christine Clay
Julie Clay
Pamela Clay
Ann Clay
Gillian Clay

Notes

  • Total is the total number of people with that surname.
  • Rank is the position in the list of names ordered by total (eg, a rank of 1 means that it's the most common name, and a rank of 10 means it's the tenth most common, etc).
  • Frequency is the percentage of people with that surname.
  • Per million people is the number of people with that surname per million of the population.

All of these are approximate figures, and the current figures especially so. The 1881 census figures are correct for what was recorded on the census, but we don't really know how accurate it was. At least, though the 1881 figures won't change, as it's a snapshot of a point in time. The current figures, by contrast, are variable according to births, deaths, migration and marriages, so the values shown here are only a best approximation to whatever was the case when the underlying data was collated and will not be the same as whatever the values are right now.

'N/A' indicates that we don't have data for this name in that country or time (usually because it's quite uncommon there and our stats don't go down that far). It doesn't mean that there's no-one there with that name at all!

For less common surnames, the figures get progressively less reliable the fewer holders of that name there are. This data is aggregated from several public lists, and some stats are interpolated from known values. The margin of error is well over 100% at the rarest end of the table!

It's possible for a surname to gain in rank and/or total while being less common per million people (or vice versa) as there are now more surnames in the UK as a result of immigration. In mathematical terms, the tail has got longer, with a far larger number of less common surnames.