Finally, it may have been a toponymic surname referring to a former settlement probably located in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
[6] According to statistics compiled by Patrick Hanks on the basis of the 2011 United Kingdom Census and the Census of Ireland 2011, there were 895 people on the island of Great Britain and five on the island of Ireland with the surname Toy as of 2011.
The 1881 United Kingdom census found 1,095 people with the surname Toy in various places in England and Scotland, particularly in Cornwall.
[1] The 2010 United States Census found 5,784 people with the surname Toy, making it the 5,951st-most-common name in the country.
In both censuses, roughly six-tenths of the bearers of the surname identified as non-Hispanic white, and slightly more than one quarter as Asian.