Tay
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Perhaps a different form of lye; or ‘tea merchant’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/teɪ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Tay is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Malaysia than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 22nd most common surname.
- SGSingapore≈1 in 404(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 958
- AUAustralia≈1 in 16K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Malaysia (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 308 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 404 (inferred from the name graph)
≈34,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Singapore, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Perhaps a different form of lye; or ‘tea merchant’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
How Tay is read(measured from records)
Tay is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.
- English45%
Perhaps a different form of lye; or ‘tea merchant’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Tea.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
founder of the first dynasty
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Malay16%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Tay in Malay.
- Turkish11%
colt (horse)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
1. Eşit, denk, yaşıt. 2. Tek, eşsiz. 3. Yan, taraf. 4. Toy. 5. Atın yavrusu. 6. Çift olan şeyin teki. 7. Çocuk.
as a wordTDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)
- Vietnamese6.0%
hand
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Tay 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MY Malaysia | #291 | ≈34,000 est. | ≈1 in 958 | — | Tay | 118 |
| SG Singapore | #22 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 404 | — | Tay | 194 |
| TR Türkiye | — | ≈5,700 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Tay | 27 |
| GH Ghana | #843 | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Tay | 44 |
| US United States | — | 1,736 | 1 in 192K | 2K | Tay | 308 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 16K | 1 | Tay | 147 |
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; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Dai Jinb. 1388CNnot in their usual nameChinese artist (1388-1462)
- Dai Zhenb. 1724CNnot in their usual nameChinese scholar
- Tai Chi-taob. 1891CNnot in their usual nameChinese politician (1891-1949)
- Dai Sijieb. 1954CNnot in their usual nameChinese–French author, screenwriter and film director
- Leon Daib. 1966TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese actor and film director
- Hongjie Daib. 1966USnot in their usual nameAmerican chemist
- Katherine Taib. 1974USnot in their usual nameAmerican attorney (born 1974)
- Daniel Tayb. 1991USAmerican actor
- Dai Weib. 1991CNnot in their usual nameChinese entrepreneur, b. 1991
- Tai Tzu-Yingb. 1994TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese badminton player
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 46 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2K | #14,087 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.7K | #16,536 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.4K | #18,196 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Tay mean, and where does it come from?
- Perhaps a different form of lye; or ‘tea merchant’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Tay?
- A machine transcription gives /teɪ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Tay have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 34 thousand people named Tay in Malaysia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tay.
- How common is the name Tay?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,736 people named Tay in 2010, about 1 in 192 thousand residents.
- How common is Tay compared with other names?
- In Malaysia, Tay is the 291st most common surname of 291,743 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Tay?
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/tayThe 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, “Tay” — the 291st most common surname in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.