Name Generator

How popular is the name Clay?

Births per year, rank history and how many Clays are alive today.

Clay (male) is an uncommon boys' name in England and Wales, ranked 845th in 2025 with 38 babies given the name. This spelling of the name peaked in 2021, when 68 babies were given the name, the 566th most popular that year. Numbers have been falling in recent years. Clay is one spelling of a name also recorded as Klay; the combined figures below cover every spelling.

Across all spellings of the name, the Clay you are most likely to meet is around 9 years old. Half of all Clays born in England and Wales are between 5 and 13, and there are at least 1,300 of them alive today. If you walk into a room of 100 males, there's less than a 1% chance that anyone will be called Clay - on average, only one in every 234 such rooms contains a Clay.

How many babies are named Clay each year?

Includes all spellings: Clay, Klay. Figures before 1996 are estimates.

Where does the Clay spelling rank?

Where does the Klay spelling rank?

Where this data comes from

Figures from 1996 onwards are the Office for National Statistics' annual baby-name registrations for England and Wales, which record every name given to three or more babies in a year. Figures before 1996 are estimates: the ONS published only top-100 rankings at ten-year intervals back to 1904, so counts for those years are modelled from the rankings, calibrated against Douglas Galbi's long-run research into English name frequencies, and shown with an uncertainty band. Estimates of living bearers combine these birth figures with national life tables and ONS mid-year population estimates.

One limit worth naming: these figures count names as registered at birth. Anyone who changes their name later in life - including trans people, and anyone who adopts a different name by deed poll or simply by use - is not reflected here. Birth registrations record where a name began, not the name a person lives with.