Tatum

At the 2020 census, 23,395 Americans bore the surname Tatum — 1,490th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 12,800.

By the numbers

People: 23,395
Rank: 1,490th
How common: 1 in 12,800
Per 100,000: 7.8

Where the name comes from

Origin Old English

From Tatham, from Old English Tāta, a personal name of unknown meaning + hām.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 52.8%
Black, not Hispanic 36.5%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 5.2%
Hispanic or Latino 4.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Tatum

Channing Tatum (born 1980)American actor, dancer and model
Edward Lawrie Tatum (1909–1975)US genetics scientist
Art Tatum (1909–1956)American jazz pianist
Jayson Tatum (born 1998)American basketball player

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

Surnames like Tatum

Tate
Tatro

Also a first name

Tatum has been given to 41,874 American babies as a first name since 1966, 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.