Tonge
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Obsolete spelling of tongue
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Tonge is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 40K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 313K
- DMDominica1 in 1.5K
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.
- United Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 225 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,600 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Dominica
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Obsolete spelling of tongue.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Tonge 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 40K | 3.1K | Tonge | 156 |
| US United States | 1,062 | 1 in 313K | 1.1K | Tonge | 225 |
| ZM Zambia | ≈260 est. | ≈1 in 66K | 1 | — | 4 |
| AU Australia | ≈240 est. | ≈1 in 108K | — | Tonge | 59 |
| DZ Algeria | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 224K | — | Tonge | 2 |
| IE Ireland | ≈61 est. | ≈1 in 85K | — | Tonge | 35 |
| DM Dominica | 49 | 1 in 1.5K | 49 | — | 2 |
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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 2025; ECZ 2021 Councillor Elections — candidate results. 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)
Tonge is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Irish, An English name of various derivations mainly found in Co. Wexford since the seventeenth century. MIF
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
In Latin, second-person singular present active imperative of tongeō
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In bnt-pro, portion of food formed with hand
as a wordBantu Lexical Reconstructions 3 (BLR3), Tervuren 2002/2003
In bnt-pro, portion de nourriture formée dans la main
as a wordBantu Lexical Reconstructions 3 (BLR3), Tervuren 2002/2003
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)
- William Cottnam Tongeb. 1764CACanadian politician
- Robert Tongeb. 1823GBBritish painter (1823-1856)
- Arthur Tongeb. 1887AUAustralian politician
- Philip Tongeb. 1897GBBritish stage, film, and television actor (1897–1959)
- Jenny Tongeb. 1941GBBritish politician (born 1941)
- Roger Tongeb. 1946GBBritish actor (1946-1981)
- Keith Tongeb. 1964GBFootballer (born 1964)
- Michael Tongeb. 1983GBEnglish footballer and coach
- Gavin Tongeb. 1983AGWest Indian cricketer
- Dale Tongeb. 1985GBFootballer (born 1985)
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 23 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 3.1K | #2,510 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.1K | #23,096 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.1K | #23,804 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 944 | #24,763 |
| DM Dominica | Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 2025 | 2025 | 49 | #178 |
| ZM Zambia | ECZ 2021 Councillor Elections — candidate results | 2021 | 1 | #42 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- 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 Tonge mean, and where does it come from?
- Obsolete spelling of tongue. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Tonge have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.6 thousand people named Tonge in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tonge.
- Where is Tonge most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Tonge is densest in Dominica — about 1 in 1.5 thousand people — even though United Kingdom holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Tonge?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,062 people named Tonge in 2010, about 1 in 313 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Tonge?
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/tongeThe 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, “Tonge”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.