Tarn
loc · Latin script
Meaning: ‘dweller by the tarn’; from ME terne ‘small lake, pool’; first attested Hugo del Tern 1332 SRCu
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/tarn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Tarn is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country.
- EEEstonia≈1 in 39K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 204K
- SESweden≈1 in 492K
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.
- United Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 125 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 39K (inferred from the name graph)
≈320 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Estonia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Tärn in SE Sweden, EE Estonia and T'Arn in AU Australia.
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)
‘dweller by the tarn’; from ME terne ‘small lake, pool’; first attested Hugo del Tern 1332 SRCu
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Tarn 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | ≈320 est. | ≈1 in 204K | 554 | Tarn | 96 |
| US United States | 170 | 1 in 2M | 214 | Tarn | 125 |
| AU Australia | ≈32 est. | ≈1 in 786K | 1 | T'Arn | 55 |
| EE Estonia | ≈32 est. | ≈1 in 39K | 20 | Tärn | 4 |
| FR France | ≈25 est. | ≈1 in 2.7M | — | Tarn | 4 |
| SE Sweden | ≈21 est. | ≈1 in 492K | — | Tärn | 4 |
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: Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); the ee-stat-nimed register. 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)
Tarn 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 English, A small mountain lake, especially in Northern England.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In French, Tarn (a department of Occitania, France)
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)
- Tan Yunxianb. 1461CNnot in their usual namephysician during China's Ming Dynasty era
- Tan Qianb. 1594CNnot in their usual nameQing dynasty person CBDB = 34834
- Michael Tarnb. 1951GBBritish actor
- Philip Tanb. 1960SGnot in their usual nameSingaporean-British actor and stuntman
- Gary Tarnb. 1962GBBritish film director
- Cecilia Tanb. 1967USnot in their usual nameAmerican writer and activist
- Evelyn Tanb. 1976SGnot in their usual nameSingaporean actress and host
- Tarn Adamsb. 1978USAmerican computer game programmer (born 1978)
- Lewis Tanb. 1987GBnot in their usual nameBritish actor and martial artist
- Hedwig Tamb. 1990HKnot in their usual nameHong Kong actress and model
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 13 sources across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 554 | #10,485 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 214 | #92,231 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 173 | #97,384 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 170 | #105,079 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 20 | #5,474 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 18 | #6,296 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Tarn mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘dweller by the tarn’; from ME terne ‘small lake, pool’; first attested Hugo del Tern 1332 SRCu Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Tarn?
- A machine transcription gives /tarn/ (IPA) for Polish.
- In which country does Tarn have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 322 people named Tarn in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tarn.
- How common is the name Tarn?
- In the United States, the national register counted 170 people named Tarn in 2010, about 1 in 2.0 million residents.
What do you want to know about Tarn?
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/tarnThe 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, “Tarn”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.