Taw
surname · Latin script
Meaning: To prepare or dress, as hemp, by beating; to tew
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/taʊ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Taw is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 882K(measured from records)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 177K
- FIFinland1 in 180K
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
- 139 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 177K (inferred from the name graph)
533 people
Highest-authority source
Malaysia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
To prepare or dress, as hemp, by beating; to tew.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Taw 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 | 533 | 1 in 2.5M | 533 | Taw | 17 |
| US United States | 377 | 1 in 882K | 865 | Taw | 139 |
| MY Malaysia | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 177K | — | Taw | 20 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈92 est. | ≈1 in 716K | 154 | Taw | 51 |
| PH Philippines | ≈73 est. | ≈1 in 1.5M | — | Taw | 18 |
| FI Finland | 31 | 1 in 180K | 31 | — | 1 |
| SG Singapore | ≈31 est. | ≈1 in 203K | — | Taw | 12 |
| NO Norway | 30 | 1 in 182K | 30 | — | 2 |
| PY Paraguay | ≈20 est. | ≈1 in 357K | — | Taw | 1 |
533 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Taw 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.
The oldest in the family
as a nameA Handbook of African Names
In Akan, a push icith the hand hy the neck: <^p5 no taw, he pushes him by the neck; wopoo no taw fwee fam\
as a wordDictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Chwee, Twi)
In Akan, a. plain y level; asasetaw, a plain; level land; s. tataw
as a wordDictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Chwee, Twi)
In Welsh, that (introduces a noun clause, marking it for emphasis)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In los, tree with red fruit --- bark used to poison fish
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.
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 18 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 865 | #29,168 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 533 | #8,779 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 377 | #54,637 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 168 | #99,725 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 154 | #25,199 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 128 | #1,100 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 31 | #34,252 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 30 | #34,948 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 4 | #31,618 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 4 | #27,184 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- 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
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 Taw mean, and where does it come from?
- To prepare or dress, as hemp, by beating; to tew. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Taw?
- In the etymology graph, Tow is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Taw?
- A machine transcription gives /taʊ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Taw have the most bearers?
- In India, the national register counted about 533 people named Taw, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled taw.
- How common is the name Taw?
- In India, the national register counted 533 people named Taw, about 1 in 2.5 million residents.
What do you want to know about Taw?
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/tawThe 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, “Taw”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.