Tana
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Nickname for Antananarivo: the capital and largest city of Madagascar
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Tana is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- CACanada≈1 in 38K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 41K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 64K
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
- 365 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈29,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Czechia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Malagasy: “place” or “town”; short form of Antananarivo
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 24 languages in the etymology graph.
How Tana is read(measured from records)
Tana is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English65%
Nickname for Antananarivo: the capital and largest city of Madagascar.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Hindi11%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Tana in Hindi.
- Czech6.0%
masculine singular present transgressive of tanout
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Tana 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 | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 48K | — | Tana | 9 |
| US United States | 8,201 | 1 in 41K | 8.1K | Tana | 365 |
| CZ Czechia | 3,474 | 1 in 3.1K | 3.5K | — | 3 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 64K | listed | Tana | 70 |
| CA Canada | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 38K | 6 | Tana | 96 |
| AL Albania | 183 | 1 in 17K | 183 | — | — |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 28K | 11 | Tana | 45 |
| SI Slovenia | 53 | 1 in 40K | 53 | — | 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; MVČR — living population register 2017; the gb-nisra-baby-names-ni register; the ca-statcan-baby-names register; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts); SURS — resident population given names. 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)
Tana 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 Malagasy, Malagasy: “place” or “town”; short form of Antananarivo
as a nameAfrican Names
Ethiopia/Kenya/Ghana: lake and river name used for several places
as a nameAfrican Names
In German, weibl. Vom., Kurzform von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In umb, talk much; discuss ; try a case ; tie olombala
as a wordVocabulary of the Umbundu Language
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)
- Tana Hobanb. 1917USAmerican photographer and creator of children's picture books (1917–2006)
- Tana Schanzarab. 1925DEGerman actress (1925–2008)
- Tana De Zuluetab. 1951ITItalian politician
- Tana Sennb. 1971USAmerican politician
- Tana Frenchb. 1973USAmerican-Irish writer and theatrical actress
- Tana Schémborib. 1973PYParaguayan filmmaker
- Tana Chanabutb. 1984THThai footballer
- Tana Adelanab. 1984NGNigerian actress, producer, model, TV presenter and entrepreneur
- Tana Sripandornb. 1986THThai footballer
- Tana Mongeaub. 1998USAmerican Internet personality
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 74 sources across 40 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 8.1K | #2,817 |
| AL Albania | INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts) | — | 183 | #1,943 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 120 | #2,817 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2025 | 53 | #1,038 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 53 | #2,108 |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 2008 | 11 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2005 | 6 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1975 | 6 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 5 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2023 | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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
- 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
- Where does the name Tana come from?
- Malagasy: “place” or “town”; short form of Antananarivo Recorded by African Names.
- What does the name Tana mean?
- In English, Nickname for Antananarivo: the capital and largest city of Madagascar.
- Is Tana a male or female name?
- Tana is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Tana have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 29 thousand people named Tana in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tana.
- Where is Tana most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Tana is densest in Czechia — about 1 in 3.1 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Tana?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,201 people named Tana in 2020, about 1 in 41 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Tana?
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/tanaThe 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, “Tana”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.