Tamura

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

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

Tamura is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Japan than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Borrowed from Japanese 田村 (Tamura).

rarermore common
  • JPJapan≈1 in 1K(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 163K
  • BRBrazil1 in 108K

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.

Japan (inferred from the name graph)

≈120,000 people, est.

Sources
160 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 1.0K (inferred from the name graph)

Japan, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Borrowed from Japanese 田村 (Tamura).

Sources 1

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Tamura 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 Tamura is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
JP Japan#231≈120,000 est.≈1 in 1K—Tamura153
CN China—≈4,600 est.≈1 in 303K—Tamura13
US United States—2,0401 in 163K2KTamura160
BR Brazil—1,9601 in 108K2K——
CA Canada—≈270 est.≈1 in 140K—Tamura16
FI Finland—451 in 124K45—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; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)

Tamura is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Thai surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand, United States, Laos

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written ทามูระ, ทามุระ, ทามระ, Thamura, ทามีระ

47 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)

Tamura is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In jpx-pro, group, crowd

    as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)

  • In jpx-pro, группа, толпа

    as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)

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)

1850190019502000Tamura Toshiko, b. 1884Hajime Tamura, b. 1924Takahiro Tamura, b. 1928Masakazu Tamura, b. 1943Ryō Tamura, b. 1946Norihisa Tamura, b. 1964Tomoko Tamura, b. 1965Yukari Tamura, b. 1976Mitsuhisa Tamura, b. 1980Mutsumi Tamura, b. 1987

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)

FormalTamura様Dear Tamura-san, (English)
Informalこんにちは、TamuraさんHi Tamura, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 24 sources across 15 countries.

Official registers attesting Tamura
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020186#39,915
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)197423—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)197212—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)197112—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)196112—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)197511—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)196711—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)197310—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)197010—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)196510—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)19688—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)19588—

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 Tamura mean, and where does it come from?
Borrowed from Japanese 田村 (Tamura). Recorded by Wiktionary.
How do you pronounce Tamura?
A machine transcription gives /tɑˈmʊɹə/ (IPA) for Japanese.
In which country does Tamura have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 124 thousand people named Tamura in Japan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tamura.
How common is the name Tamura?
In the United States, the national register counted 2,040 people named Tamura in 2010, about 1 in 163 thousand residents.
How common is Tamura compared with other names?
In Japan, Tamura is the 231st most common surname of 142,159 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Tamura?

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

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, “Tamura” — the 231st most common surname in Japan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Tamura parses inside a full name →