Tai
Tai is a boy's name that peaked in 2004, when it was the 1,172nd most popular in the United States. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 2,516th. About 4,800 Tais are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 24.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Tai boys named Tai
Girls and boys called Tai
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Tai crossed from girls to boys in 1992, having already crossed in 1978, and has stayed there for 34 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 88% boys, and in 2025 it was 83%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 51 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 4,937
- Estimated living today
- 4,800
- Median age today
- 24
- Peak year
- 2004
- Best rank
- 1,172nd
- Rank in 2025
- 2,516th
- First recorded
- 1922
- Girls / boys
- 1,815 / 3,122
How old the living Tais are
born that year still alive today
Of the 4,937 babies given the name since 1922, about 4,800 are alive — 97 in every hundred. Roughly 1,400 of them are children and 6 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2001 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Chinese
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Tais
- Tai Tzu-Ying (born 1994)Taiwanese badminton player
- Shō Tai (1843–1901)last king of the Ryūkyū Kingdom
- Zhou Tai (200–228)General serving warlord Sun Quan (died c.223)
- Tai Chi-tao (1891–1949)Chinese politician
- Lung Ying-tai (born 1952)Taiwanese writer, politician
People named Tai with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Tai is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Tai is most concentrated in California (4.2×), Hawaii (4.0×), Florida (2.3×), New York (1.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2004
The most popular boys’ names the year Tai peaked:
Tai elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Tai | 695 | 699th |
| England and Wales girls | Tai | 64 | 1,722nd |
| Scotland boys | Tai | 23 | 459th |
| France boys | Tai +1 spelling | 20 | 4,490th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Tai | 3 | 375th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Tai among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Tai | — | 28 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Tai against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.