Raya

Where Raya comes from

Raya hasn't made it into the dictionaries we draw on, and nobody well known enough for an encyclopedia has carried it yet — so for now its story is the one the SSA record tells. Names that spell a familiar sound a new way often live here for a while before anyone writes them down.

  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1909
    Raya Garbousova born
    Russian-American musician
  2. 1910
    Raya Dunayevskaya born
    American philosopher
  3. 1958
    First appearance
    #6,103 among girls, 5 babies — the first year at least five got the name.
  4. 2023
    Peak, #353
    867 babies named Raya — more than any year before or since.
In the dictionary

No dictionary entry for this spelling — which is its own kind of rare.

Namesakes
  • Raya Dunayevskaya · American philosopher, 1910–1987
  • Raya Garbousova · Russian-American musician, 1909–1997
  • Raya Meddine · American actress, born 1953
  • Raya Zin Aldden · sport shooter, born 1988
  • Raya Bronstein · Israeli sports woman and sports educator, 1929–2023

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.