Tough
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Location name from Aberdeenshire; from parish of Tough, ultimately Gaelic tulach ‘hill’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/tʌf/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Tough is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom.
- GBUnited Kingdom
- USUnited States
- AUAustralia
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Location name from Aberdeenshire; from parish of Tough, ultimately Gaelic tulach ‘hill’. Early forms are Aberdonian.
Sources 1
- Scottish Surnames
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Tough 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 English, from OE tōh, ME togh, tow(e) ‘vigorous, steadfast, stubborn’; first attested Robert, Gilbert Towe 1275 RH (L, Ha)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Strong and resilient; sturdy.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, poju, tava, tilili
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
In German, alternative form of taff (“tough; robust; assertive and not overly sensitive”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In enm, alternative form of tow
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)
- Edward Toughb. 1878USAmerican architect ; 1878 ;
- Charlie Toughb. 1880AUAustralian rules footballer
- Dave Toughb. 1907USAmerican drummer (1907–1948)
- Bob Toughb. 1920USbasketball player
- Allen Toughb. 1936CACanadian educator and scholar
- Hazel Toughb. 1942MTbadminton player
- Paul Toughb. 1967USCanadian writer
- Kathy Toughb. 1969CACanadian volleyball player
- Ginny Toughb. 1978CAbadminton player
- Dave ToughUSAmerican songwriter
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 12 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 1.1K | #5,945 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 299 | #62,577 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 260 | #74,375 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 254 | #80,550 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 19 | #86,409 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #395,989 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2018 | 1 | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | — | 1 | — |
| 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
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- Where does the name Tough come from?
- Location name from Aberdeenshire; from parish of Tough, ultimately Gaelic tulach ‘hill’. Early forms are Aberdonian. Recorded by Scottish Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Tough?
- A machine transcription gives /tʌf/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Tough mean?
- Recorded meaning: Location name from Aberdeenshire; from parish of Tough, ultimately Gaelic tulach ‘hill’.
- In which country does Tough have the most bearers?
- Tough is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom.
What do you want to know about Tough?
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/toughThe 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, “Tough”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.