Tate

At the 2020 census, 68,390 Americans bore the surname Tate — 479th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 4,370.

By the numbers

People: 68,390
Rank: 479th
How common: 1 in 4,370
Per 100,000: 22.9

Where the name comes from

Origin a given name

From Middle English *Tate, partially from Old English Tāta, from Proto-West Germanic *tait, from Proto-Germanic *taitaz (“radiant, glad, cheerful, tender”); and partially from Old Norse Táta, a personal name of unknown meaning.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 53.4%
Black, not Hispanic 37.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 5.1%
Hispanic or Latino 3.1%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.8%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Tate

Andrew Tate (born 1986)American-British businessman, former kickboxer, dating coach and manosphere influencer
Sharon Tate (1943–1969)American actress and model
Catherine Tate (born 1968)English comedian, actress and writer
John Tate (1925–2019)American mathematician
Tanya Tate (born 1979)British pornographic actress
Nahum Tate (1652–1715)Anglo-Irish poet and playwright
Allen Tate (1899–1979)American poet, essayist and social commentator
Miesha Tate (born 1986)American mixed martial artist

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

Surnames like Tate

Tatum
Tatro

Also a first name

Tate has been given to 28,955 American babies as a first name since 1912, peaking in 2025. See it as a given name.

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.