Tee
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: dweller by the stream, OE ēa; first attested Robert atte Ee 1351 AssSt
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/tiː/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Tee is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Malaysia than in any other country.
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 944(inferred from the name graph)
- SGSingapore≈1 in 2.5K
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 19K
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.
- Malaysia (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 315 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 944 (inferred from the name graph)
≈35,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Malaysia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
dweller by the stream, OE ēa; first attested Robert atte Ee 1351 AssSt.
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
How Tee is read(measured from records)
Tee is one spelling over 2 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.
- English55%
dweller by the stream, OE ēa; first attested Robert atte Ee 1351 AssSt.
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
The name of the Latin-script letter T/t.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Malay31%
a Chinese Indonesian surname from Hokkien.
as a wordrecorded as Indonesiankaikki.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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Tee 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MY Malaysia | #272 | ≈35,000 est. | ≈1 in 944 | — | Tee | 114 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 12K | listed | — | 3 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈8,000 est. | ≈1 in 27K | — | Tee | 33 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈3,900 est. | ≈1 in 28K | — | Tee | 89 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Tee | 41 |
| SG Singapore | #217 | ≈2,500 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Tee | 110 |
| US United States | — | 1,557 | 1 in 214K | 1.6K | Tee | 315 |
| EE Estonia | — | ≈100 est. | ≈1 in 12K | 77 | — | 8 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; 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)
Tee is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, tea (drink made by infusing parts of a plant, especially leaves or buds of Camellia sinensis, in water)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, tee, teeing ground (area from which the first shot on a hole is hit)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Finnish, tea (dried leaves or buds of the tea plant, Camellia sinensis)
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)
- Elsa Teeb. 1917GBBritish actress (1917-2006)
- Nicholas Teeb. 1949GBBritish rower
- Tee Seng Keongb. 1965MYbadminton player
- Eduard Teeb. 1985EEEstonian actor (born 1985)
- Ashley Teeb. 1989USAmerican glamour model and pornographic actress
- Tee Jing Yib. 1991MYMalaysian badminton player
- Tee Kai Wunb. 2000MYMalaysian badminton player
- Janelle Lazo TeeFilipino model and actress
- Ron TeeUScollege basketball player (1967–1967) Idaho
- Kian Sek TeeGBresearcher
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 29 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.6K | #17,407 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.6K | #17,951 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.4K | #18,461 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 77 | #1,069 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 71 | #1,254 |
| 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
- What does the name Tee mean, and where does it come from?
- dweller by the stream, OE ēa; first attested Robert atte Ee 1351 AssSt. Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Tee have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 35 thousand people named Tee in Malaysia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tee.
- How do you pronounce Tee?
- A machine transcription gives /tiː/ (IPA) for English.
- What are other forms of the name Tee?
- In the etymology graph, Tow and Wanton are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Tee?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,557 people named Tee in 2010, about 1 in 214 thousand residents.
- How common is Tee compared with other names?
- In Malaysia, Tee is the 272nd most common surname of 291,743 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Tee?
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/teeThe 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, “Tee” — the 272nd most common surname in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.