Gay surname origin
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Christopher) and Barbados, but by 1641 the Spanish had moved in and destroyed some of these including those at Providence Island. He had come with his parents as a young boy first to Rhode Island and then to Wisconsin and Illinois. The British continued to expand the settlements including setting the First Federation in the British West Indies by 1674; some of the islands include Barbados, Bermuda, Cayman Island, Turks and Caicos, Jamaica and Belize then known as British Honduras.
(ISBN 0-900455-44-6)
| Gay migration to the United States | + |
Because of this political and religious unrest within English society, many people decided to immigrate to the colonies.
18
Gay Settlers in West Indies in the 17th Century
- William Gay, who settled in Barbados in 1670
- Richard Gay, who settled in Jamaica in 1685
- John and Abell Gay, who settled in Barbados in 1685
| Contemporary Notables of the name Gay (post 1700) | + |
- Betsy Gay (1929-2025), American actress and yodeller, born in Waterford, Connecticut, child star in the ‘Our Gang’ films
- Benjamin Stevenson Gay Jr.
(1980-2024), American NFL and CFL football player who was a running back for the Cleveland Browns in 2001
- John Gay (1924-2017), American Academy Award nominated screenwriter, known for his work on Run Silent, Run Deep and Separate Tables
- Peter Gay (1923-2015), born Peter Joachim Fröhlich, an American educator and writer, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University
- Tyson Gay (b.
- George Gay, an English sailor, was a pioneer settler in Oregon territory in 1837. : Gale Research Co., 1985, Print (ISBN 0-8103-1795-8)
- Cornwall Online Parish Clerks.
And then there were some extraordinary nicknames such as Drinkwater and Wildgoose.
Here are some of these nickname surnames that you can check out.
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Gay Numbers Today
- 7,000 in the UK (most numerous in Gloucestershire)
- 12,000 in America (most numerous in Georgia)
- 5,000 elsewhere (most numerous in Australia)
Gay and Like Surnames
Nicknames must have been an early feature of medieval life in a family or community as these nicknames later translated into surnames.
1833), Welsh coal miner who was working at the Prince of Wales colliery in Abercarn, Wales on the 11th September 1878 when there was a coal mine explosion; he died 21
Gay, British settler travelling from London aboard the ship "Zealandia" arriving in Lyttelton, Christchurch, South Island, New Zealand in 1869 17
| Gay migration to West Indies | + |
Then there were likenesses to animals (notably Fox and Wolfe but also Peacock) and to birds (Crowe and Wren for example). Many of these families went on to make important contributions to the emerging nations of Canada and the United States. Thus, both the numbers that go into this SFI calculation are formally indeterminate. Those who made it, though, were welcomed by opportunities far greater than they had known at home in England.
They made many attempts but failed in some to establish settlements on the Islands including Saint Lucia and Grenada. John Gay, British settler convicted in Middlesex, England in 1790, sentenced to 7 years for stealing, transported aboard the ship "Albermarle" leaving in 1790 arriving in New South Wales, Australia in 1791 10
1784 he was Chief Justice of Court Common Pleas 13
Gay Settlers in Canada in the 19th Century
- John H Gay, who landed in Esquimalt, British Columbia in 1862
| Gay migration to Australia | + |
To do this, right click each map link and select “Open in New Window”; you can then size and array the two map windows side by side for comparison, first minimizing the surname page if necessary.
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GAYs in Great Britain, 1881, per 100,000 Population
GUYs in Great Britain, 1881, per 100,000 Population
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GAYs in Scotland, 1881, Actual Numbers
GUYs in Scotland, 1881, Actual Numbers
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GAYs in England & Wales, 1881, Actual Numbers
GUYs in England & Wales, 1881, Actual Numbers
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The Surname GAY
The surname GAY is English, and encompasses the spelling "Guy" as well as "Gay", since the former spelling better reflects the actual British, and colonial North American, pronunciation of the name.
| The GAY Surname in Britain and the U.S. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Born between: | 1881-1901 | 1880-1900 | ||
| Surname(s) in: | England | Scotland | United States | |
| all names (millions) | 13.5 | 2 | 34.3 | |
| Gay | 1918 | 189 | 6068 | |
| Guy | 3276 | 198 | 4590 | |
| ----- | ----- | ----- | ||
| TOTALS | 5194 | 387 | 10658 | |
| Surname Frequency Index | |
|---|---|
| 1900 1997 | |
| England | 384.7 |
| Scotland | 193.5 |
| United States | 309.8 227.1 |
The Surname Frequency Index (SFI) for 1900 was derived by dividing the number of people with the generic surname GAY (including all the above listed spelling variants) who were born during the 20 year period immediately preceding the census for each country, by the total in millions of population enunmerated in that census.
The SFI for the US in 1997 is based on a database of listed telephone subscribers, as reported in Hanks’s Dictionary of American Family Names.
The SFI is only a surrogate for the actual frequency in each country of the generic surname GAY compared to other surnames, but it is the best measure of surname frequency I can conceive and readily compute.