Tao

6,021 people in the United States were counted with the surname Tao in the 2020 census, making it the 5,574th most common in the country. That is about one person in 49,600.

By the numbers

People: 6,021
Rank: 5,574th
How common: 1 in 49,600
Per 100,000: 2.0

Where the name comes from

Origin Mandarin

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Tao described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 92.2%
White, not Hispanic 4.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 2.5%
Hispanic or Latino 0.7%
Black, not Hispanic 0.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.05%

Notable people called Tao

Terence Tao (born 1975)Australian-American mathematician
Tao Yuanming (365–427)Chinese poet
David III of Tao (930–1001)Georgian prince
Zhao Tao (born 1977)Chinese actress
Xue Tao (768–831)Tang Dynasty poet Chinese woman poet in Qing Dynasty. CBDB ID = 0095068
Tao Hongjing (456–536)Chinese polymath, writer, alchemist and astronomer, founder of Shangqing Taoism
Wang Tao (born 1967)Chinese table tennis player
Tian Tao (born 1994)Chinese weightlifter

People named Tao with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.