Given name & surname
Tatu
“number three”
Tatu is a unisex given name. It is used in Finnish and Swahili.
Meaning & origin
How it developed
In Finnish usage, Tatu is a diminutive of Taavetti.
The story
Published U.S. birth records include this spelling as early as 2025. This is the earliest published observation available here, rather than a date for the name’s origin.
From dated birth records
Tatu through the years
- Babies since 1880
- 6
- 0 boys · 6 girls
- Most popular year
- 2025
- 6 babies
- 2025
- 6
- #14,760 for girls
- 2021–25 vs 2016–20
- —
- Too few births to compare
By the numbers
In 2025, this name appeared in 6 U.S. birth records for girls, ranking No. 14,760 among girls’ names. The recent annual counts are too incomplete to establish a ten-year comparison. Published U.S. population figures for this spelling include 270 as a surname in 2020.
From Social Security birth records and U.S. Census name counts for this exact spelling. Other spellings are counted separately.
Tatu’s family of names
In Finnish usage, Tatu is a diminutive of Taavetti. In Swahili usage, Tatu as a surname has a conventional equivalent in the Korean form 삼.
Inner ring: nicknames and forms · outer: across languages.
Nicknames & forms 1
Diminutives, pet forms, short forms and variants used alongside the name.
Across languages 1
Equivalents and cognates in other languages, plus older forms it grew from.
People named Tatu
- Tatu VanhanenFinnish political scientist (1929-2015)
- Tatu YlönenFinnish IT, researcher, creator of SSHborn 1968
- Tatu PekkarinenFinnish singer (1892-1951)
- Tatu Kolehmainenlong-distance runner1885–1967
- Tatu MiettunenFinnish footballer (born 1995)
- Tatu VaaskiviFinnish writer, critic and essayist1912–1942
Listed by how widely each person is written about, which says nothing about the name itself.