Tamu

given name · Latin script

Meaning: in Kenia und Tansania vorkommender weibl

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Tamu is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • GEGeorgia≈1 in 107K(inferred from the name graph)
  • NONorway1 in 379as Tom
  • HRCroatia1 in 916as Tomo

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 Tamu 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)

118,350 named Tom, 2020

3 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
45 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 107K (inferred from the name graph)

Georgia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

TamuLatin(measured from records)
টমBengali(measured from records)
თამუGeorgian(measured from records)

5 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Tam in US United States.

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)

recorded in German

in Kenia und Tansania vorkommender weibl. Vom., der au f Suaheli »süß« bedeu­ tet.

Sources 1

  • DUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

Where in the world(measured from records)

Tamu 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 Tamu is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States118,350as Tom1 in 2.8K118KTam24
NO Norway14,413as Tom1 in 37939K——
SE Sweden9,776as Tom1 in 1K9.8K—1
DK Denmark6,028as Tom1 in 9746K——
HR Croatia4,617as Tomo1 in 9164.6K——
FI Finland4,207as Tom1 in 1.3K5.6K——
GE Georgia≈38 est.≈1 in 107KlistedTamu9

118,350 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020, counting the spelling tom. 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; SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form). 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)

Tamu is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name11 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, German

    Also written Tamue, Taemu, Tamü, Tâmû, Tämu

  • Spanish given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Argentina, Guatemala, India

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Tamú, Tamù, Támu, Tamü

42 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

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.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Tamu 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 tsg, rice wrapped and boiled in a casing made of woven coconut leaves; ketupat

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In bpz, make a smacking sound while eating, as a pig does

    as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0

  • In pam, we; us (inclusive of the person spoken to)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Turkish, hell (place where sinners go after death)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In pam, a plant: Curcuma zedoaria (Berg.)

    as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0

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.

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 14 sources across 9 countries.

Official registers attesting Tamu
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.)———

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

What does the name Tamu mean?
Recorded meaning: in Kenia und Tansania vorkommender weibl.
Is Tamu a male or female name?
Tamu is a male 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.
In which country does Tamu have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 118 thousand people named Tom, more than in any other country we hold.
How common is the name Tamu?
In the United States, the national register counted 118,350 people named Tom in 2020, about 1 in 2.8 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Tamu?

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/tamu

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, “Tamu”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Tamu parses inside a full name →