Thäw

given name · Latin script

Thäw is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Myanmar (Burma) it is the 53rd most common surname. Recorded meaning: From Middle English thowen, thawen, from Old English þāwian, from Proto-West Germanic *þauwjan, from Proto-Germanic *þawjaną, from Proto-Indo-European *teh₂- (“to melt”).

rarermore common
  • MMMyanmar (Burma)≈1 in 2.9K(inferred from the name graph)
  • THThailand≈1 in 243Kas Thawong
  • ISIceland≈1 in 35K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Thäw itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

23,404 named Thao, 2010

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
101 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 2.9K (inferred from the name graph)

Myanmar (Burma), est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

ThäwLatin(measured from records)
ท่าวุ้งThai(measured from records)

7 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Thaw in US United States, MM Myanmar (Burma), MY Malaysia and 2 more, ท่าวุ้ง in TH Thailand and Thao in LA Laos.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Derivation of Thäw: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Thäw
  1. Middle Englishthowen(measured from records)
  2. Old Englishþāwian(measured from records)
  3. Proto-West Germanic*þauwjan(measured from records)
  4. Proto-Germanic*þawjaną(measured from records)
  5. Proto-Indo-European*teh₂-“to melt”(measured from records)

From Middle English thowen, thawen, from Old English þāwian, from Proto-West Germanic *þauwjan, from Proto-Germanic *þawjaną, from Proto-Indo-European *teh₂- (“to melt”).

Sources 3

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Wiktionary
  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Thäw 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.

Where Thäw is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—23,404as Thao1 in 14K27KThaw101
MM Myanmar (Burma)#53≈19,000 est.≈1 in 2.9KlistedThaw71
ID Indonesia—≈1,000 est.≈1 in 258KlistedThaw12
TH Thailand—≈280 est.≈1 in 243K#226,148ท่าวุ้ง43
MY Malaysia—≈260 est.≈1 in 128K—Thaw19
SG Singapore—≈140 est.≈1 in 43K—Thaw10
LA Laos—≈73 est.≈1 in 103K—Thao16
FI Finland—101 in 557K495—1
IS Iceland—≈10 est.≈1 in 35K10——

23,404 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling thao. 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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Thäw is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Thaw

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Evidence(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Thäw under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Thäw mean, and where does it come from?
From Middle English thowen, thawen, from Old English þāwian, from Proto-West Germanic *þauwjan, from Proto-Germanic *þawjaną, from Proto-Indo-European *teh₂- (“to melt”). Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Wiktionary and 1 other source.
Is Thäw a male or female name?
Thäw 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 Thäw have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 23 thousand people named Thao, more than in any other country we hold.
How common is the name Thäw?
In Finland, the national register counted 10 people named Thäw, about 1 in 557 thousand residents.
How common is Thäw compared with other names?
In Myanmar (Burma), Thäw is the 53rd most common surname of 12,945 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Thäw?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/th%C3%A4w

The 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, “Thäw” — the 53rd most common surname in Myanmar (Burma). Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Thäw parses inside a full name →