Tak is a Dutch, English, Indian, and Korean surname.
Origins
The
Dutch surname Tak originated both from the Dutch-language word "tree branch", and as a diminutive of the
Germanic given name
Theuderic.
The Indian surname Tak/Taak belongs to gotra of
Hindu
Hindus (; ; also known as Sanātanīs) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism, also known by its endonym Sanātana Dharma. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pp. 35–37 Historically, the term has also be ...
Bagri Kumhars (Khapmaru). It is said that they were descents of Raja Sain Pal, a
Rajput ruler. They are mostly found in
Punjab,
Haryana
Haryana () is a States and union territories of India, state located in the northern part of India. It was carved out after the linguistic reorganisation of Punjab, India, Punjab on 1 November 1966. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with les ...
and
Rajasthan
Rajasthan (; Literal translation, lit. 'Land of Kings') is a States and union territories of India, state in northwestern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the List of states and union territories of ...
.
As an
English surname, Tak is a historical spelling of Tagg, which originated in a variety of ways, including as a diminutive of various
Germanic name
Germanic given names are traditionally dithematic; that is, they are formed from two elements ( stems), by joining a prefix and a suffix. For example, King Æþelred's name was derived from ', meaning "noble", and ', meaning "counsel". The i ...
s starting with Dag- (e.g.
Dagobert), and as a nickname possibly from
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English pe ...
"tatter" (referring to a person wearing tattered clothes) or from
Old French
Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th [2-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...
"belt buckle". One early record of a person with a surname spelled Tak is Hugo Tak of Rushden, Northamptonshire, in the Poll Tax of 1379.
The Korean surname spelled Tak () in the Revised Romanization of Korean is written with the hanja (; ), meaning "lofty" or "outstanding".
The same character is used to write the Chinese surname now pronounced
Zhuó in
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l=Mandarin (bureaucrat), officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretch ...
. The major ''
bon-gwan'' (clan hometown) for people with this surname is
Gwangsan,
Gwangju
Gwangju (; ), formerly romanized as Kwangju, is South Korea's list of cities in South Korea, sixth-largest metropolis. It is a designated Special cities of South Korea, metropolitan city under the direct control of the central government's Home ...
. See
Gwangsan Tak clan.
[. The Jokbo Museum cites the following work for their pages on family names: ]
Statistics
In the Netherlands, there were 1,579 people with the surname Tak in 2007, up from 1,203 in 1947. The largest numbers of bearers of the surname were found two municipalities in
North Brabant in the
Southern Netherlands:
Halderberge (191 people) and
Roosendaal (139 people).
The 2000 South Korean census recorded 19,395 people in 6,023 households with the surname spelled Tak in the Revised Romanization of Korean. Of these, 17,322 people in 5,381 households identified their clan's as Gwangsan or Gwangju, and 1,368 people in 433 households as
Gapyeong, while the remaining 705 people in 209 households identified other places as their or did not state their .
Bearers of this surname usually but not always choose to spell it as Tak in the Latin alphabet. In a study by the
National Institute of the Korean Language based on year 2007 application data for
South Korean passports, it was found that 73.6% of people with that surname spelled it in Latin letters as Tak in their passports. Rarer alternative spellings included Tag, Taek, and Tark.
The
2010 United States census found 854 people with the surname Tak, making it the 28,856th-most-common surname in the country. This represented an increase from 653 people (33,054th-most-common) in the
2000 census. In both censuses, more than eight-tenths of bearers of the surname identified as Asian, and about one-tenth as
non-Hispanic white
Non-Hispanic Whites, also referred to as White Anglo Americans or Non-Latino Whites, are White Americans who are classified by the United States census as "White" and not of Hispanic or Latino origin. According to annual estimates from the Unit ...
.
People
*
Ad Tak (born 1953), Dutch cyclist
*
Ashk Ali Tak (born 1956), Indian politician, member of the Rajya Sabha representing Rajasthan
*
Bibi Dumon Tak (born 1964), Dutch writer of children's literature
*
Mahinder Tak (), American radiation oncologist and retired US Army colonel of Indian descent
*
Meng Heang Tak (), Cambodian-born Australian politician
*
Paul-Peter Tak (), Dutch immunologist
*
Pieter Lodewijk Tak (1848–1907), Dutch journalist and politician
*
Saawan Kumar Tak (born 1936), Indian film director
*
Suresh Tak (born 1962), Indian politician, member of the Rajasthan Legislative Assembly
Korean
*
Tak In-suk (born 1949), North Korean speed skater
*
Tak Jung-im (; born 1967), South Korean fencer
*
Tak Jae-hoon (), stage name of Bae Sung-woo (born 1968), South Korean singer
*
Tak Jae-in (; ), South Korean voice actor
See also
*
Seomoon Tak (; born 1978), South Korean singer; here the
Korean surname is Seomoon/Seomun,
References
{{Surname
Dutch-language surnames
Surnames of Indian origin
Korean-language surnames
Surnames of English origin