Bray is an English and Irish surname and the name of a seaside town south of Dublin, whose Irish name Bré is usually explained as "hill"; as an English surname it may also come from an Old French word for marsh. For today's parents it mostly works as a short, punchy cousin of Brayden and Braylon. Bray is rare in the United States: it stood at number 6375 in 2000 and climbed to number 2770 in 2025, its best rank so far.