Surname statistics for Tan

There are approximately 11,497 people named Tan in the UK. That makes it the 905th most common surname overall. Out of every million people in the UK, approximately 182 are named Tan.

Frequency Comparisons
TotalRankFrequency %Per million people
Great Britain
United Kingdom (current)11497905N/A182
United Kingdom (1881 census)1854108less than 0.0011
Change since 1881+11479+53203+181
Other Countries
United States215671530N/A80
Australia3763392N/A230

Top male forenames

Jonathan Tan
Boon Tan
Kok Tan
Choon Tan
Chin Tan
John Tan
Peter Tan
Lee Tan
William Tan
Andrew Tan
Richard Tan
Chong Tan
Hock Tan
Kian Tan
Wooi Tan
Daniel Tan
Eng Tan
Wei Tan
David Tan
Beng Tan

Top female forenames

Mei Tan
Siew Tan
Sharon Tan
Mary Tan
Elaine Tan
Vanessa Tan
Jacqueline Tan
Kee Tan
Poh Tan
Caroline Tan
Bee Tan
Wendy Tan
Su Tan
Soo Tan
Melissa Tan
Jessica Tan
Sally Tan
Lee Tan
Leong Tan
Pamela Tan

Notes

  • Total is the total number of people with that surname.
  • Rank is the position in the list of names ordered by total (eg, a rank of 1 means that it's the most common name, and a rank of 10 means it's the tenth most common, etc).
  • Frequency is the percentage of people with that surname.
  • Per million people is the number of people with that surname per million of the population.

All of these are approximate figures, and the current figures especially so. The 1881 census figures are correct for what was recorded on the census, but we don't really know how accurate it was. At least, though the 1881 figures won't change, as it's a snapshot of a point in time. The current figures, by contrast, are variable according to births, deaths, migration and marriages, so the values shown here are only a best approximation to whatever was the case when the underlying data was collated and will not be the same as whatever the values are right now.

'N/A' indicates that we don't have data for this name in that country or time (usually because it's quite uncommon there and our stats don't go down that far). It doesn't mean that there's no-one there with that name at all!

For less common surnames, the figures get progressively less reliable the fewer holders of that name there are. This data is aggregated from several public lists, and some stats are interpolated from known values. The margin of error is well over 100% at the rarest end of the table!

It's possible for a surname to gain in rank and/or total while being less common per million people (or vice versa) as there are now more surnames in the UK as a result of immigration. In mathematical terms, the tail has got longer, with a far larger number of less common surnames.