Tai
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A fish, the Japanese bream
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/taj˧˧/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Tai is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 33K(measured from records)
- SISlovenia1 in 2.5K
- SESweden1 in 60K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 369 (measured from records)
- 1 in 2.5K (inferred from the name graph)
10,097 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Slovenia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A fish, the Japanese bream.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
How Tai is read(measured from records)
Tai is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Vietnamese41%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Tai in Vietnamese.
- English27%
A fish, the Japanese bream.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Hindi11%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Tai in Hindi.
- Chinese5.9%
Hanyu Pinyin reading of 呔
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Tai counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
10,097 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; SURS — resident population given names; stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Tai is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
An eagle.
as a nameThe African book of names
Estremo
as a nameIl grande libro dei nomi per bebè. Significato, origini, curiosità. Oltre 7000 nomi per bambine e bambini Significato,…
In cdo, Tai A coll. word : to cast away ； used in the coll. for the death of a child, gone, dead ！
as a wordAn Alphabetic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Foochow Dialect
In cdo, a pine cone, ( sting-bah-lai), rapids, shallows in Streams, (tang)
as a wordDictionary of the Foochow Dialect
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Zhou Taib. 200CNGeneral serving warlord Sun Quan (died c.223)
- Sho Taib. 1843JPlast king of the Ryūkyū Kingdom (1843-1901)
- Ta-You Wub. 1907TWnot in their usual nameChinese nuclear physicist (1907–2000)
- Mai Tai Singb. 1923USactor (1923-2018)
- Tzi Mab. 1962USnot in their usual nameHong Kong American actor
- Tai Shanib. 1976GBBritish artist
- Tai Harab. 1990AUAustralian actor
- Hồ Tấn Tàib. 1997VNVietnamese footballer
- Tai Baribob. 1998ILIsraeli footballer
- Tai Abedb. 2004ILIsraeli association footballer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 77 sources across 41 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 7.7K | #2,453 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.4K | #2,453 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 890 | #425 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2025 | 857 | #208 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 170 | #5,866 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 133 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 91 | #37,981 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 81 | #33,771 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 53 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 52 | #33,771 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 51 | #2,283 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 39 | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Tai mean, and where does it come from?
- A fish, the Japanese bream. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Tai?
- A machine transcription gives /taj˧˧/ (IPA) for Vietnamese.
- Is Tai a male or female name?
- Tai is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Tai have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 10 thousand people named Tai, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tai.
- Where is Tai most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Tai is densest in Slovenia — about 1 in 2.5 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Tai?
- In the United States, the national register counted 10,097 people named Tai in 2020, about 1 in 33 thousand residents.
- How common is Tai compared with other names?
- In Hong Kong, Tai is the 378th most common given name of 23,276 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Tai?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/taiThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Tai” — the 378th most common given name in Hong Kong. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.