Tonne
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ton, barrel, bin
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/tʌn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Tonne is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 640K(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 130K
- FIFinland≈1 in 154K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 163 (measured from records)
- 1 in 130K (inferred from the name graph)
≈5,800 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Toenne in NO Norway.
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)
ton, barrel, bin
Sources 1
- A Frequency Dictionary of German
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Tonne 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈5,800 est. | ≈1 in 242K | — | Tonne | 1 |
| US United States | 520 | 1 in 640K | 520 | Tonne | 163 |
| DE Germany | ≈400 est. | ≈1 in 202K | listed | Tonne | 67 |
| ES Spain | ≈90 est. | ≈1 in 555K | — | Tonne | 6 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈51 est. | ≈1 in 1.3M | — | Tonne | 17 |
| NO Norway | 42 | 1 in 130K | 42 | Toenne | 7 |
| FI Finland | ≈36 est. | ≈1 in 154K | — | Tonne | 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; the deutsche-namenkunde-gottschald-1982 register; 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)
Tonne 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 German, barrel, vat, tun, drum
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, meist indirekter Berufsname zum Tonnenmacher; Bearer count 1045+160.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In German, Tonn | er, emacher Tonn|ebaum, hofer: s. Tann
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In German, variant of Tonn(er); also Tönnemacher
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In Finnish, alternative form of tuonne (“there (when the speaker points at the place)”)
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)
- Günther Tonneb. 1916DEGerman officer and Knight's Cross recipient (1916–1943)
- Wolfgang Tonneb. 1918DEGerman flying ace (1918-1943)
- Estás Tonnéb. 1975UAInternational guitarist
- Grant Hendrik Tonneb. 1976DEGerman politician
- Karen TonneGerman film editor (born 1979)
- Cathryn TonneGBUrban air pollution researcher
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 16 sources across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 520 | #41,799 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 510 | #45,217 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 470 | #43,290 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 42 | #29,449 |
| DE Germany | Deutsche Namenkunde (Gottschald, 1982) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (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 Tonne mean, and where does it come from?
- ton, barrel, bin Recorded by A Frequency Dictionary of German.
- How do you pronounce Tonne?
- A machine transcription gives /tʌn/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Tonne have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 5.8 thousand people named Tonne in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tonne.
- Where is Tonne most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Tonne is densest in Norway — about 1 in 130 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Tonne?
- In the United States, the national register counted 520 people named Tonne in 2010, about 1 in 640 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Tonne?
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/tonneThe 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, “Tonne”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.