Tait
Masculine · “Cheerful”
Tait is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 1,207 boys against 16 girls since 1880.
Tait is a Norse word meaning cheerful, carried into Scotland by settlers and frozen into a surname. It is one of a small set of Scottish family names that are Old Norse adjectives rather than places or trades, and the meaning has stayed transparent for a thousand years.
How old is the name Tait?
Tait first appears in US birth records in 1967 — 58 years ago. The typical Tait alive today was born around 1998, making them about 27 years old. About 1,200 people named Tait are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Tait most popular?
Tait peaked in 1974, reaching #1439 nationally. See the whole 1974 chart.
Where it comes from
From teitr to Tait
The story of Tait
A nineteenth-century Scottish physicist of this name built the first serious attempt at a table of the elements out of knots. The idea, which he took from Kelvin, was that atoms might be knotted vortices in the ether, and that the different elements would correspond to different knots; to test it he began enumerating knots systematically, sorting them by how many times a string crosses itself. The physics was wrong and the ether does not exist. The mathematics survived: his tables are the beginning of knot theory, which is now a serious field with applications in the study of DNA and in quantum computing. He also worked out why a golf ball flies further when it is scuffed, which is why they have dimples.
Meaning
Cheerful, glad
Old Norse teitr, cheerful or merry, used as a byname and then as a surname in the Northern Isles and the Borders. Nicknames of this kind describe a person's manner and are among the most reliably readable of all surname origins, because there is nothing in them but an ordinary adjective.
How the name formed
- teitr
- Tait
Related forms: Teitr
Pronouncing Tait
TAYT
One syllable, rhyming with late. The ai is one of the several English spellings of that vowel and is the one that arrived from Old Norse and Old French rather than from native English words.
Nicknames for Tait
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1967
- Most boys named
- 200744 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1439reached in 1974
- Change vs 2023
- +100.0%10 in 2024, from 5
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Tait in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Teitr in Old Norse — related form
Taits among us
people named Tait are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Tait sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- One syllable, four letters, and no ambiguity about how it is said or spelled.
- The meaning is cheerful and can be given to a child in one word.
- It works for a child of either sex, which the record confirms.
- The record carries it for girls as well as boys, so it signals nothing on a form.
- It reads as a surname and will be entered in the wrong column on forms.
- It will be heard as Tate, which is far commoner and a different name.
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What they receive
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Tait
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Taits are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,200 people named Tait are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Tait in 2025?
- Tait is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Tait with classmates?
- Tait will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More T names
The most-given names starting with T, all years combined.
Thomas#34 · Timothy#203 · Tyler#219 · Terry#1115 · Theodore#4 · Travis#434 · Todd#1609 · Tony#783
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Tait? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Tait and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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