Gay
17,985 US births on record
Where Gay stands
17,985US births · 1886–2025
Gay has been registered 17,985 times in the United States since 1886. It did not clear the 5-birth reporting floor in 2025, so the SSA published no figure for it that year.
Its moment was 1959, when 682 babies were given it. In 2 of the years between, the name fell under the 5-birth floor and the registrar published nothing — those years are the marks along the base of the chart, not gaps in the name's use.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
How Gay's figures are worked out
- Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
- Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
- The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
- The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
- A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Gay was under the floor in 2 years of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000 reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
Gay in the United States
Between 1971 and 1982 the name has been falling — down 92% as a share of girls' births.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Gay in New Zealand
In New Zealand, Gay has been registered 468 times since 1937, peaking in 1946 with 32 births. It did not clear the DIA's 10-birth reporting floor in 2025.
SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Gay in England & Wales
Gay does not appear in the ONS list for England and Wales. That means it was given to fewer than 3 babies in every year from 2019 to 2025 — not that it is unused there. ONS publishes only those seven years, so a name that had its moment in England before 2019 is invisible here however common it once was.
SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Decade by decade in the US
| Year | Rank | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1890 | #667 | 16 |
| 1900 | #885 | 18 |
| 1910 | #845 | 26 |
| 1920 | #968 | 57 |
| 1930 | #545 | 155 |
| 1940 | #378 | 308 |
| 1950 | #359 | 481 |
| 1960 | #381 | 626 |
| 1970 | #1,017 | 122 |
| 1980 | below floor | <5 |
| 1990 | below floor | <5 |
| 2000 | below floor | <5 |
| 2010 | below floor | <5 |
| 2020 | below floor | <5 |
<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.
Where in the United States
The states that registered Gay most often since 1886. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.
| State | Births |
|---|---|
| Texas | 2,006 |
| California | 1,342 |
| New York | 830 |
| Illinois | 793 |
| Michigan | 760 |
| Ohio | 728 |
| Pennsylvania | 690 |
| Virginia | 564 |
| Louisiana | 560 |
| North Carolina | 463 |
Questions about Gay
How popular is the name Gay?
Gay did not clear the 5-birth reporting floor in 2025, so no figure was published for it that year. Its best US rank was #315 in 1943.
When was Gay most popular?
Gay peaked in 1959, when 682 babies in the United States were given the name.
Is Gay rising or falling?
Measured as a share of all girls' births, Gay has been falling between 1971 and 1982 (-92%).
Names that had their moment when Gay did
Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1959, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.
SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026
