Tabby
given name · Latin script
Meaning: A kind of waved silk, usually called watered silk, manufactured like taffeta, but thicker and stronger
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/tæbi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Tabby is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 549K(measured from records)
- KEKenya≈1 in 31K
- IEIreland≈1 in 171K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 191 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 31K (inferred from the name graph)
≈7,700 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Kenya, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A kind of waved silk, usually called watered silk, manufactured like taffeta, but thicker and stronger. The watering is given to it by calendering.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Tabby 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈7,700 est. | ≈1 in 182K | — | Tabby | 4 |
| KE Kenya | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 31K | — | Tabby | 10 |
| US United States | 606 | 1 in 549K | 583 | Tabby | 191 |
| ID Indonesia | ≈580 est. | ≈1 in 459K | — | Tabby | 11 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 403K | listed | Tabby | 62 |
| IE Ireland | ≈30 est. | ≈1 in 171K | — | Tabby | 3 |
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; the penguin-baby-names-2009 register. 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)
Tabby is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Croatian, zool. domaća mačka karakterističnog prugastog krzna, vuče porijeklo iz starog Egipta
as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export
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)
- Tabby Tindellb. 1995USAmerican soccer player
- Tabitha Stoeckerb. 2000GBnot in their usual nameBritish skeleton racer (born 2000)
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 7 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 583 | #17,946 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 23 | #17,946 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1971 | 19 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1966 | 17 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1970 | 13 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1972 | 12 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1969 | 11 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1963 | 11 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1957 | 11 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1967 | 9 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1973 | 8 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1968 | 8 | — |
Reference works 1
- 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
- Where does the name Tabby come from?
- A kind of waved silk, usually called watered silk, manufactured like taffeta, but thicker and stronger. The watering is given to it by calendering. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Is Tabby a male or female name?
- Tabby is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Tabby?
- In the etymology graph, Tabita and Tabea are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Tabitha.
- How do you pronounce Tabby?
- A machine transcription gives /tæbi/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Tabby mean?
- Recorded meaning: A kind of waved silk, usually called watered silk, manufactured like taffeta, but thicker and stronger.
- In which country does Tabby have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 7.7 thousand people named Tabby in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tabby.
- How common is the name Tabby?
- In the United States, the national register counted 606 people named Tabby in 2020, about 1 in 549 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Tabby?
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/tabbyThe 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, “Tabby”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.