Tami
Feminine · “date palm”
Tami is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 37,927 girls against 90 boys since 1880.
Tami is the shortest spelling of a name that arrived from a novel and left with a decade. Tammy came from Tamara and Thomasina and from a 1948 book; Tami is that sound with the ending mid-century America preferred.
How old is the name Tami?
Tami first appears in US birth records in 1942 — 83 years ago. The typical Tami alive today was born around 1966, making them about 59 years old. About 34,500 people named Tami are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Tami most popular?
Tami peaked in 1959, reaching #154 nationally. Today it ranks #8362, 8,208 places below that high. See the whole 1959 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From tamar to Tami
The story of Tami
Tamar is an old Hebrew name that traveled into Russian and Georgian as Tamara, where a twelfth-century queen made it royal. Tammy as an independent American name dates from the middle of the twentieth century, when a novel and the films made from it put the sound in front of the whole country. The respellings followed the usual pattern — Tammy, Tammie, Tami — and Tami peaked in the early 1970s.
Meaningscholars disagree
date palm
Read as short for Tamara or Tamar, the meaning is the Hebrew tamar, 'date palm'. Read as short for Thomasina, it goes back to the Aramaic te'oma, 'twin'. The short form does not say which, and by the 1960s most bearers had neither name behind them.
How the name formed
- tamar
- Tamara
- Tammy
- Tami
Related forms: Tamar · Tamara · Tammy · Tammie
Pronouncing Tami
TAM-ee
Two syllables, stress on the first, the a as in 'ham'. All three spellings are said identically.
Nicknames for Tami
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
- 1942
- Most girls named
- 19602,259 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #154reached in 1959
- Change vs 2023
- +20.0%12 in 2025, from 10
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.
Tami in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Tamar in Hebrew — related form
- Tamara in Russian — related form
- Tammy in English — spelling variant
- Tammie in English — spelling variant
Tamis among us
people named Tami are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 133,939 born in 2025 was named Tami
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Tami
- #8362
- Tami on the 2025 chart
- #907
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Tami went to 12 girls in 2025, but Tammy is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 53, which makes it the 907th most-given girls’ name of the year — 7,455 places above the chart.
- Tammy41
- Tami12
About 1 girl in 30,326 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 133,939 for Tami itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Marcella test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Tami's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Marcella climbed just as high around 1922, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Marcella's path sketches the road Tami is walking now.
Tami sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Tami beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Tami in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Tamara stands behind it as a formal form with a documented royal history.
- The shortest and cleanest spelling of the three, with nothing doubled.
- Impossible to mispronounce in English.
- Three spellings were current at once and Tammy is much the commonest.
- The name is tightly dated to the 1960s and 1970s.
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What they receive
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Tami
Feminine · #8362 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Tamis are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 34,500 people named Tami are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Tami?
- Tami is one of 2 recorded spellings. Tammy is the more common one — 41 births in 2025 against 12 for Tami.
- How popular is the name Tami in 2025?
- Tami ranks #8362 among US girl names in 2025, with 12 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Tami?
- About 1 in every 133,939 US girls born in 2025 was named Tami — 12 in all.
- Will my child share the name Tami with classmates?
- Tami will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Tami
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Lona#8362 · Peggy#8362 · Leda#8362 · Margarette#8362 · Rella#8362 · Evalena#8362 · Vashti#8362 · Nona#8362
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Tami? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Tami and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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