Tammy
- Pronunciation
- [Ta-mmy]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Abbreviation Of Thomasina And Tamara.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Tammy
Tammy is used as an abbreviation or nickname form drawing on two distinct parent names: Thomasina (the feminine form of Thomas, from the Aramaic toma, meaning "twin") and Tamara (from the Hebrew tamar, meaning "palm tree"). In practice Tammy circulated in American use primarily as an independent given name rather than a formal abbreviation, its cheerful two-syllable shape fitting naturally into the mid-century American preference for bright, casual feminine names. The palm tree heritage of Tamara gives it a remote biblical root via the Book of Genesis and the Song of Solomon.
The name first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1958 and rose quickly to its national peak of #8 in 1966, accumulating more than 307,000 recorded top-1000 births across its 22-year chart run. Ladda Tammy Duckworth was born on March 12, 1968, in Bangkok, Thailand, to American Frank Duckworth, a Marine veteran working in refugee resettlement, and Lamai Sompornpairin, a Thai Chinese woman from Chiang Mai — she went on to a distinguished career in public service and national politics. Tammy last appeared in the SSA top-1000 in 1980, at rank #96.
Tammy is a textbook example of a name whose entire American arc — rise, peak, and exit — unfolded within a single generation: first charting in 1958, peaking in 1966, and leaving the top-1000 by 1980. It reads today as a firmly 1960s–1970s name, carrying the era's preference for short, energetic, informal feminine forms. The only recorded variant is Tam.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Tammy
US Popularity History (1958–1980)
Annual US births named Tammy by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1963 with 21,193 girls named Tammy (girl rank #12 that year).
Where it stands today: in 1980, ranked #96 for girls (3,134 US births). That's 84 places below its 1963 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tam | Heart | Female | Vietnamese |
Famous People Named Tammy
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Tammy.
- Tammy Duckworth is an Asian-American war veteran and politician.
Looking for names like Tammy?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Tammy to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Tammy against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).