Tatou

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in French: armadillo

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/tatu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Tatou is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Cameroon than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • CMCameroon≈1 in 26K(inferred from the name graph)
  • TNTunisia≈1 in 39K
  • CICôte d’Ivoire≈1 in 50K

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.

Cameroon (inferred from the name graph)

≈1,100 people, est.

Sources
111 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 26K (inferred from the name graph)

Cameroon, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

armadillo

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.

How Tatou is read(measured from records)

Tatou is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.

  • French69%

    armadillo

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

  • Arabic11%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Tatou in Arabic.

  • English5.7%

    The giant armadillo (Priodontes maximus)

    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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Tatou 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 Tatou is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CM Cameroon≈1,100 est.≈1 in 26K—Tatou6
CI Côte d’Ivoire≈540 est.≈1 in 50K—Tatou5
CD Congo - Kinshasa≈470 est.≈1 in 215K—Tatou3
DZ Algeria≈360 est.≈1 in 120KlistedTatou3
TN Tunisia≈300 est.≈1 in 39K—Tatou3
MA Morocco≈190 est.≈1 in 190K—Tatou8
NL Netherlands511 in 339K51Tatou4

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: CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); the dz-kaggle-names 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Tatou is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, United States

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Tàtoù

  • Greek surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece, Netherlands, Tunisia

    Also written Τάτου, Τατου

  • Japanese name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Tàtoù

22 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)

Tatou 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 rap, First person plural inclusive

    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.

How to address them(machine-generated)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 12 sources across 9 countries.

Official registers attesting Tatou
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)200751#30,605
DZ AlgeriaAlgerian names (Kaggle, MIT)———

Reference works 2

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens

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 Tatou mean, and where does it come from?
armadillo Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Tatou?
A machine transcription gives /tatu/ (IPA) for French.
In which country does Tatou have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 1.1 thousand people named Tatou in Cameroon, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tatou.
How common is the name Tatou?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted 51 people named Tatou in 2007, about 1 in 339 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Tatou?

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

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, “Tatou”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Tatou parses inside a full name →