Clay — #543 US boys' name

What the Data Says About Clay

The Social Security Administration has registered 39,736 babies named Clay between 1880 and 2024, spanning 145 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a boy's name, Clay currently holds the #543 rank among boys for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 1960, when 904 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Clay performed strongest in the 1990s, accumulating 5,806 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Clay shows notable generational variation in parental adoption. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in Texas, which accounts for 4,340 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by California and Ohio. In total, SSA state-level files list Clay in 46 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Clay in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 39,736 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.