Tanner
- Pronunciation
- [Ta-nner]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Leather Maker
- Origin
- English
About the Name Tanner
Tanner is an English occupational surname meaning "one who tans hides" — referring to the medieval leather-working trade in which animal hides were processed (using oak bark, urine, and other tanning agents) into usable leather. The trade was essential for medieval European economies but smelly enough that tanning workshops were typically located on the outskirts of towns. The surname appears in English records continuously since at least the 12th century.
The name's transition from surname to American first name accelerated through the 1990s and 2000s, riding the broader American taste for occupational surnames as boys' names alongside Cooper, Hunter, and Mason. Notable bearers include American skateboarder Tanner Hall (born 1984, the iconic American freestyle skier), American baseball player Tanner Roark, and various contemporary YouTube influencers.
Tanner held a US top-100 boys' rank from 1995 through 2010 — about fifteen years of consistent American popularity. The name has receded slightly since but remains in steady use. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the surname-style sophistication, the in-built occupational-craftsman heritage, and the popular two-syllable -er ending family. Two firm syllables, hard consonants, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-occupational and contemporary American. Common nicknames Tan, Tanny, and the rare Ner each carry distinct registers. There are no significant international variants since the name's first-name use is essentially American.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Tanner
US Popularity History (1993–2025)
Annual US births named Tanner by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1998 with 4,704 boys named Tanner (boy rank #82 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #475 for boys (641 US births). That's 393 places below its 1998 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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Where in the US Is Tanner Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Tanner the strongest states are Vermont, New Hampshire, Montana.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vermont | #118 | 24 |
| 2 | New Hampshire | #165 | 64 |
| 3 | Montana | #173 | 41 |
| 4 | South Dakota | #190 | 24 |
| 5 | Maine | #197 | 62 |
| 6 | Alaska | #201 | 24 |
| 7 | Idaho | #219 | 113 |
| 8 | Utah | #227 | 264 |
| 9 | Pennsylvania | #227 | 523 |
| 10 | West Virginia | #229 | 96 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas | #530 | 596 |
| 2 | California | #507 | 613 |
| 3 | New Jersey | #505 | 135 |
| 4 | Illinois | #459 | 229 |
| 5 | Oklahoma | #455 | 106 |
| 6 | Arizona | #452 | 163 |
| 7 | New York | #424 | 390 |
| 8 | Nevada | #409 | 70 |
| 9 | Kansas | #407 | 80 |
| 10 | Washington | #397 | 195 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Tanner in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Tanner?
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 Tanner to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Tanner against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).