Tatu

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in Swahili: Swahili form meaning third; day-of-birth name

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

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

Tatu is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Finland than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • FIFinland1 in 1.2K(measured from records)
  • SESweden1 in 255K
  • ISIceland1 in 351Kas Tat

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Tatu itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Finland (measured from records)

4,713 people

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
36 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 1.2K (inferred from the name graph)

Finland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

TatuLatin(measured from records)
টাটBengali(measured from records)

Locally spelled Tat in US United States.

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)

Swahili form meaning third; day-of-birth name.

Sources 1

  • African Muslim Names

Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.

How Tatu is read(measured from records)

Tatu is one spelling over 5 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.

  • Swahili34%

    Swahili form meaning third; day-of-birth name.

    as a nameAfrican Muslim Names

    Swahili: third-born child; also 'three'.

    as a nameAfrican Names

    three

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

    untangle

    as a wordBantu Lexical Reconstructions 3 (BLR3), Tervuren 2002/2003

    Swahili Monday-born name.

    as a nameAfrican Muslim Names

  • Hindi20%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Tatu in Hindi.

  • English14%

    Archaic form of tattoo (“decorative ink design on the skin”).

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Finnish5.5%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Tatu in Finnish.

  • Indonesian5.5%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Tatu in Indonesian.

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)

Tatu 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 Tatu is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
FI Finland4,7131 in 1.2K5.1KTatu9
US United States613as Tat1 in 543K2.4KTat13
SE Sweden401 in 255K40—1
NL Netherlands20as Tat1 in 864K100——
PL Poland5as Tat1 in 7.7M11——
IS Iceland1as Tat1 in 351K1——

4,713 people counted by DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register). 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: DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)

Tatu is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Tanzania, Finland, Kenya, United States

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Tatü, Tatue

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Tâțu, Țâțu

  • Spanish given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland, Argentina, Tanzania, Mexico

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Tatü, Tatú, Tatū, Ţâţu

  • Romanian given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Romania, Italy, Finland, Spain

    Also written Țațu, Țâțu, Țățu, Tâțu

58 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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

1850190019502000Tatu Nissinen, b. 1883Tatu Kolehmainen, b. 1885Tatu Väätäinen, b. 1898Tatu Malmivaara, b. 1908Tatu Vanhanen, b. 1929Tatu Ylönen, b. 1968Tatu Siivonen, b. 1974Tatu Mäkelä, b. 1988Tatu Sinisalo, b. 1992Tatu Miettunen, b. 1995

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)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 38 sources across 21 countries.

Official registers attesting Tatu
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—5.1K#302
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—4.7K—
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—40#15,966
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)199932—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)200028—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)200927—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)200727—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)200527—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)200427—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)200127—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)201126—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)200626—

Reference works 6

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
  • 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 Tatu mean, and where does it come from?
Swahili form meaning third; day-of-birth name. Recorded by African Muslim Names.
Is Tatu a male or female name?
Tatu is a male 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.
How do you pronounce Tatu?
A machine transcription gives /tatu/ (IPA) for Swahili.
What are other forms of the name Tatu?
In the etymology graph, Daniel, Dan and Danny are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Tatu have the most bearers?
In Finland, the national register counted about 4.7 thousand people named Tatu, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tatu.
Where is Tatu most common?
Tatu is densest in Finland, where the national register counts about 1 in 1.2 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Tatu?
In Finland, the national register counted 4,713 people named Tatu, about 1 in 1.2 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Tatu?

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

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, “Tatu”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Tatu parses inside a full name →