Tremain
Masculine · “the farmstead by the stone”
Tremain is Cornish, and Cornish names announce themselves before you know a word of the language. Anything beginning Tre- is a place first and a person second: a farmstead, a settlement, a homestead with a boundary. This one is the homestead by the stone, and that stone was real enough to name the land around it.
How old is the name Tremain?
Tremain first appears in US birth records in 1969 — 56 years ago. The typical Tremain alive today was born around 1988, making them about 37 years old. About 900 people named Tremain are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Tremain most popular?
Tremain peaked in 1980, reaching #1410 nationally. See the whole 1980 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Cornish tre, a farmstead, joined to men, a stone to Tremain
The story of Tremain
There is an old rhyme, first written down by antiquarians and repeated ever since: by Tre, Pol and Pen shall ye know all Cornishmen. It works because those three elements — the farmstead, the pool, the headland — begin so many Cornish surnames that a list of them is legible as a map. Tremaine belongs to that pattern exactly. But the rhyme also conceals a problem it cannot solve. Cornwall has more than one Tremaine: a parish in the north, near Launceston, and other holdings elsewhere on the peninsula, each named the same way because each had a stone. A family carrying the name therefore knows what the name describes and cannot know where it happened. The name is a precise description of an unidentified place, which is a very Cornish situation for a name to be in.
Meaning
the farmstead by the stone
Tre is the commonest element in Cornish place names and means a farmstead or settlement; men, from maen, is a stone. The compound describes a holding identified by a standing stone — the kind of landmark that made a boundary legible before anything was written down. The reading is agreed. What is not agreed is which particular holding any given family came from, because there is more than one place with this name.
How the name formed
- Cornish tre, a farmstead, joined to men, a stone
- Several holdings across Cornwall take the same descriptive name
- The place names become surnames as families are recorded
- Tremaine, Tremayne and Tremain settle as parallel spellings
- American parents take the surname as a first name
Related forms: Tremaine · Tremayne · Tremen
Pronouncing Tremain
truh-MAYN
The stress falls on the second syllable, which is what makes the name sound like a title rather than a place. In Cornwall the first element is closer to a clear TRE than to the reduced vowel American speakers use, but nobody will correct a child for the American version.
Nicknames for Tremain
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
- 1969
- Most boys named
- 198045 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1410reached in 1980
- Change vs 2019
- 0.0%6 in 2021, from 6
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.
Tremain in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Tremaine in English — spelling variant
- Tremayne in English — spelling variant
- Tremen in Cornish — related form
Tremains among us
people named Tremain 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
Tremain 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
- A real language behind it, with a meaning that can be pointed at on a map
- The second-syllable stress gives the name lift and keeps it from sounding like a surname read out
- Recognizable without being common, and every spelling of it sounds the same
- Three spellings share the sound, so the child will spell it out constantly and still be written as Tremaine by default.
- The name has been used in America long enough to acquire a generation, and it may read as belonging to that generation rather than to a Cornish parish.
- Nothing in the record ties a particular family to a particular Tremaine, so the heritage story stops at the language.
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Tremain
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Tremains are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 900 people named Tremain are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Tremain in 2025?
- Tremain is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Tremain with classmates?
- Tremain 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 Tremain? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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