Skip to content
BM

Chinese surname

Surname Tan

陳 · 譚

Tan is the Hokkien and Teochew spelling of the Chinese surname 陳 (also Chan, Chin, Chen), and the pinyin spelling of the surname 譚.

Characters for the surname Tan

The spelling Tan is common in Hokkien, Teochew and Mandarin (pinyin) romanization.

  • 陳

    surname; to exhibit

    Hokkien tân / Teochew dang5 / Mandarin chén

    attested

  • 陈

    surname; to exhibit (simplified form)

    Hokkien tân / Teochew dang5 / Mandarin chén (simplified form of 陳)

    attested

  • 譚

    surname; variant of 談 (to talk, discuss)

    Mandarin tán / Cantonese taam4 / Hokkien thâm

  • 谭

    surname (simplified form of 譚)

    Mandarin tán (simplified form of 譚)

陳 all spellings of chén譚 all spellings of tán

Possible characters for Tan

Tan 陳 chén · Hokkien · Teochew 譚 tán · Hokkien · Mandarin
The spelling Tan can stand for 2 characters. The spelling alone does not show which one a family uses.
CharacterMandarin reading · romanization of the spelling
陳chén · Hokkien · Teochew
譚tán · Hokkien · Mandarin

Other spellings of the same character

  • Chan 陳Cantonese, Hokkien
  • Chen 陳Mandarin (pinyin)
  • Chin 陳Hakka, Cantonese
  • Chun 陳Cantonese
  • Ding 陳Foochow, Mandarin (pinyin)
  • Tang 陳Teochew, Cantonese, Mandarin (pinyin)
  • Ting 陳Foochow, Cantonese
  • Tham 譚Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien
  • Thum 譚Hokkien, Teochew, Hakka

About the surname Tan

Tan is the Hokkien and Teochew spelling of the surname 陳 (simplified 陈), from the readings tân in Hokkien and dang5 in Teochew. The same character is written Chan in Cantonese (can4), Chin in Hakka and Chen in Mandarin. Wiktionary lists 陳 tenth in the Baijiaxing. Tan is also the Mandarin pinyin spelling (tán) of a different surname, 譚 (simplified 谭). Wiktionary gives 譚 the readings taam4 in Cantonese and thâm in Hokkien, and its dialect spellings include Tham and Tam (as in the singer Alan Tam, 譚詠麟). The word 譚 is a variant of 談, “to talk”. The spelling Tan alone does not show which character a family uses.

Tan in official JPN data

1940s
Boy: 2,788 · 16.3% Girl: 3,150 · 16.7%
1950s
Boy: 1,130 · 12.5% Girl: 1,363 · 10.7%
1960s
not in the top 10
1970s
not in the top 10
1980s
not in the top 10
1990s
Girl: 861 · 8.6%
2000s
not in the top 10
2010s
Boy: 772 · 5.8% Girl: 828 · 7.5%
People registered with Tan as their first name (as published by JPN), by decade of birth, for the decades in which it was in the top 10 for its sex in the JPN Chinese table. In these records the name JPN publishes is often the surname. Bar length shows the name’s share of that decade’s top-10 total for the sex (the percentage after the count), because those totals differ between decades. Source: JPN via data.gov.my (CC BY 4.0)

Sources

  1. Wiktionary: 陳 · en.wiktionary.org · meaning
  2. MDBG: 陳 · mdbg.net · meaning
  3. MDBG: 陈 · mdbg.net · meaning
  4. Wiktionary: 譚 · en.wiktionary.org · meaning
  5. MDBG: 譚 · mdbg.net · meaning
  6. MDBG: 谭 · mdbg.net · meaning

Names are shared across communities. The categories on this site are for browsing only: they describe a name and its spelling, not anyone’s ethnicity, religion or background.

Entry ID: mn00019 · Updated · Report a mistake