Tame
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Either person from Thame, Oxfordshire, or from a nickname for a quiet or mild-mannered person
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/teɪm/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Tame is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 78K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 130K
- PGPapua New Guinea≈1 in 39K
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.
- India (measured from records)
- Sources
- 141 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 39K (inferred from the name graph)
1,158 people
Highest-authority source
Papua New Guinea, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Either person from Thame, Oxfordshire, or from a nickname for a quiet or mild-mannered person.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Tame 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | 1,158 | 1 in 1.1M | 1.2K | Tame | 21 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈790 est. | ≈1 in 72K | — | Tame | 33 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈510 est. | ≈1 in 130K | 1.1K | Tame | 115 |
| AU Australia | ≈330 est. | ≈1 in 78K | 1 | Tame | 70 |
| PE Peru | ≈290 est. | ≈1 in 110K | — | Tame | 13 |
| PG Papua New Guinea | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 39K | 4 | — | 2 |
1,158 people counted by Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls. 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: Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); PNG Election Results Database — candidate names (1972–2022). 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)
Tame is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, from Tame (Buckinghamshire or North Riding of Yorkshire); first attested Aluered de Tame 1086 DB
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, from ME tame tame, domesticated (OE tarn). 2. habitation name from Thame in Oxon., so called from a Brit, river name, meaning possibly ‘dark’.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, Mild and well-behaved; accustomed to human contact.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Māori, a male given name, equivalent to English Tom
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, definite natural masculine singular of tam
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Alby Tameb. 1877AUAustralian rules footballer (1877-1965)
- Kevin Tameb. 1931AUAustralian rules footballer (1931-1995)
- Johnny Tameb. 1947DEGerman singer-songwriter
- Chris Tameb. 1949GBBritish writer (1949-2006)
- Michael Tameb. 1956AUAustralian cricketer
- Jasmine Tameb. 1986USAmerican pornographic actress
- Jack Tameb. 1987NZNew Zealand broadcaster (born 1987)
- Grace Tameb. 1994AUAustralian activist
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 35 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 1.2K | #4,899 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 1.1K | #6,170 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 238 | #590 |
| PG Papua New Guinea | PNG Election Results Database — candidate names (1972–2022) | — | 4 | #32 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- 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 Tame mean, and where does it come from?
- Either person from Thame, Oxfordshire, or from a nickname for a quiet or mild-mannered person. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Tame?
- A machine transcription gives /teɪm/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Tame have the most bearers?
- In India, the national register counted about 1.2 thousand people named Tame, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tame.
- How common is the name Tame?
- In India, the national register counted 1,158 people named Tame, about 1 in 1.1 million residents.
What do you want to know about Tame?
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/tameThe 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, “Tame”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.