Frequency (Great Britain)

Introduction

Ancestry

This section shows the number of GRAY and GREY names recorded in the census indices held by Ancestry.co.uk on the 1st November 2009. The data is split into that for England, Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.  It should be realised that the data is only as accurate as that given to the enumerator, how the enumerator recorded it and how people transcribed the data and input it into Ancestry’s database.  On top of that, there could be errors I’ve introduced in extracting the numbers from Ancestry’s web-site.  Because of this, not only should the data NOT be seen as the official Ancestry view, it should ONLY be used as an indication of number of these names actually extant at the time the census was taken.

GRAY England Scotland Wales CI IoM
1901 43,286 18,446 763 84 37
1891 37,100 16,457 643 82 39
1881 34,642 15,337 525 77 18
1871 27,445 12,824 430 51 22
1861 23,268 12,369 316 46 30
1851 19,936 11,957 248 69 15
1841 16,996 10,306 155 57 11
GREY England Scotland Wales CI IoM
1901 22,794 417 647 14 1
1891 19,944 421 512 4 5
1881 19,952 507 366 0 8
1871 15,416 533 309 5 2
1861 12,611 423 233 9 2
1851 10,703 688 225 7 2
1841 8,523 653 153 13 6

National Trust

The national Trust Names site gives the following Data for GRAY

  1881 1998 Change
Frequency 42,729 60,227 +17,498
Rank 69 65 +4
Occurrences per million names 1,580 1,617 +37

and the following for GREY

  1881 1998 Change
Frequency 6,507 4,811 -1,696
Rank 664 1,275 -611
Occurrences per million names 241 129 -112

Taliesin Arlein

The Taliesin Arlein Names site gives the following for those living in England, Wales and the Isle of Man in September 2002.

Name Count Rank
GRAY 67,549 82
GREY 6,518 1,214