TATUM
Tatum is a surname of unmistakably English provenance, frequently encountered throughout the British Isles and beyond. The name is first documented on the island of Great Britain during the Norman period, and it derives from Old English elements that reveal the topographical or locational nature of its original bearers.
The root of the surname is the Old English word tate, referring to a “measure of land”. In the late medieval period, the name was often applied to persons residing on a parcel of land of a particular size, functioning as a descriptive or geographic identifier. An alternative etymology situates the name as a locational surname associated with the place known as Tatham in Lancashire, near Lancaster. The toponym appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Tathaim and later in the Fines Court Rolls of Lancashire in 1202 as Tateham. These early forms indicate a meaning of “Tata’s homestead”, where tata is a pre‑7th century personal name and ham denotes a settlement, farm, or homestead.
Historical records show that individuals bearing the name appear as early as the reign of King John, with a case in 1208 of William de Tateham recorded in the Pleas before the King in Yorkshire. In the later medieval period the name is recorded with various spellings, including Tatam, Tatham, Tatem and the contemporary Tatum. The earliest evidence of the surname in continental America is that of Nathaniell Tatam, a settler who arrived on the ship George in May 1619 and was recorded as a resident of Sherley Hundred in the Virginia Colony in 1623.
In the United Kingdom the surname and its cognates appear most regularly in the Midlands and North East of England. In the United States it is most prevalent in the southern and mid‑western states of Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee and Mississippi; an estimated 23,061 people in the United States are recorded under the surname, making it the 873rd most common surname nationwide. In addition to the United States, the name is found in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and, to a lesser extent, Ireland and India, where migration during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries brought the designation south of the equator.
The surname Tatum is also occasionally used as a given name. By the nineteenth century this development is evident in several records where the family name is adopted as a first name, reflecting a customary practice in English-speaking cultures of preserving surnames within descendants’ own names.
While the spelling variations of the surname—such as Tatom, Tattam, Tatam, Tatem and Taton—are common, they share a common ancestry that can be traced back to the early medieval period. No speculative claim is made about potential French or Danish origins; the documented evidence supports an Anglo‑Saxon origin rooted in personal naming and settlement habitations within England and surrounding territories.
Typical given names associated with the Tatum surname
Male
- Anthony
- Daniel
- David
- Dean
- James
- John
- Matthew
- Michael
- Paul
- Peter
- Richard
- Stuart
Female
- Ann
- Carol
- Caroline
- Christine
- Claire
- Elizabeth
- Gillian
- Jenny
- Nicola
- Pamela
- Rebecca
- Sarah
- Susan
Similar and related surnames
Related and similar names are generated algorithmically based on the spelling, and may not necessarily share an etymology.
How to communicate the surname Tatum in...
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There are approximately 983 people named Tatum in the UK. That makes it roughly the 7,470th most common surname in Britain. Around 15 in a million people in Britain are named Tatum.
Origin: English
Region of origin: British Isles
Country of origin: England
Religion of origin: Christian
Language of origin: English
Famous people named Tatum
- Channing Tatum - American actor
- Jayson Tatum - American basketball player
- Kelvin Tatum - Ron Mountford
Names and descriptions courtesy of Wikipedia, and may contain errors. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of every famous person with this name.