Tear
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Tear is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Main GB Location (1881): Lincs; Northants; Lancs;. nickname from Middle English ter(e) ‘of fine appearance or character’. The name may sometimes have been confused with Terry .
- USUnited States1 in 960K◐
- SGSingapore1 in 178K
- GBUnited Kingdom1 in 226K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈818 ◐
- Sources
- 78 ●
- 1 in 178K ◐
across 11 countries
4.7K records
Official registry-verified
Singapore
Meaning & origin●
Main GB Location (1881): Lincs; Northants; Lancs;. nickname from Middle English ter(e) ‘of fine appearance or character’. The name may sometimes have been confused with Terry . Compare Johs Teare, 1591, Elizabeth Terry, 1695 in IGI (Petworth, Sussex).
Sources 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by estimated bearers.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | ≈346 | 3.4K rec. | 1 in 960K | 283 | Tear | 78 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈292 | 878 rec. | 1 in 226K | — | Tear | 42 |
| AU Australia | ≈52 | 140 rec. | 1 in 494K | — | Tear | 21 |
| GH Ghana | ≈37△ | 17 rec. | 1 in 789K | — | Tear | 5 |
| SG Singapore | ≈35 | 53 rec. | 1 in 178K | — | Tear | 13 |
| CA Canada | ≈21 | 49 rec. | 1 in 1.8M | — | Tear | 11 |
| IR Iran | ≈11 | 0 rec. | 1 in 7.5M | — | Tear | 1 |
| PH Philippines | ≈9 | 47 rec. | 1 in 12M | — | Tear | 5 |
| IE Ireland | ≈9 | 17 rec. | 1 in 574K | — | Tear | 2 |
| NL Netherlands | ≈4 | 9 rec. | 1 in 4.1M | — | Tear | 5 |
| BE Belgium | ≈2 | 5 rec. | 1 in 7.6M | — | Tear | 2 |
| AR Argentina | — | — | — | 144 | — | — |
Roughly 346 people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 960K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English4K64%
- Spanish1.2K19%
- Welsh5519%
- Arabic962%
- French711%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 4,036 | 64% |
| Spanish | 1,201 | 19% |
| Welsh | 551 | 9% |
| Arabic | 96 | 2% |
| French | 71 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Notable people with this name●
- Adolphus Tearb. 1862GBBritish photographer
- Magnus Skogsberg Tearb. 1961SESwedish actor
- Imogen Tearb. 2003USAmerican actress
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence●
Attested in 12 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 283 | #65,492 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 275 | #75,616 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 230 | #82,044 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 144 | — |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 15 | #13,537 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1984 | 5 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1971 | 5 | — |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 5 | #4,195 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024) | 2024 | 3 | #1,263 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — Vornamen der Geborenen (1984–present) | 2024 | 2 | #1,760 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — Vornamen der Geborenen (1984–present) | 2021 | 1 | #3,438 |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2010 | — | — |
Reference works 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-03 data build · 13 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Tear?
- We estimate roughly 818 people bear Tear (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
- In which country does Tear have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 346 people bear Tear in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled tear.
- Where is Tear most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Tear is densest in Singapore — about 1 in 178 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- What does the name Tear mean?
- Recorded meaning: Main GB Location (1881): Lincs; Northants; Lancs;. nickname from Middle English ter(e) ‘of fine appearance or character’. The name may sometimes have been confused with Terry .
Query this name via API
curl https://nelma-api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/tearThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Tear”. Data snapshot 2026-08-31.