Tee (surname)

Tee is an English and Chinese surname

Origins

As an English surname, Tee originates in two ways:

As a variant spelling of Tye, a locative surname from Middle English atte teye 'at the enclosure'
Also as a locative surname, from an erroneous rebracketing of atte e 'at the stream'

Tee may also be the spelling of multiple Chinese surnames, based on their pronunciation in different varieties of Chinese; they are listed below by their spelling in Hanyu Pinyin, which reflects the standard Mandarin pronunciation:

Zhèng, spelled Tee based on its Hokkien pronunciation. This spelling is found for example among overseas Chinese communities in Malaysia, in the Philippines, and in Singapore.
Chí, spelled Tee based on its Hokkien pronunciation. This spelling is found for example in Singapore.
Dài, spelled Tee based on its pronunciation in Hokkien or Teochew. This spelling is found for example in Indonesia.
Shī, spelled Tee based on its Hainanese pronunciation. This spelling is found for example in Singapore.

According to statistics compiled by Patrick Hanks on the basis of the 2011 United Kingdom census and the Census of Ireland 2011, 1,065 people on the island of Great Britain and 10 on the island of Ireland bore the surname Tee as of 2011. In the 1881 United Kingdom census there had been 583 people with the surname Tee, primarily at Hampshire, Northamptonshire, and Sussex. The 2010 United States census found 1,557 people with the surname Tee, making it the 17,951st-most-common name in the country. This represented an increase from 1,381 in the 2000 Census. In the 2010 census, roughly half of the bearers of the surname identified as non-Hispanic Asian, three-tenths as non-Hispanic white, and one-tenth as non-Hispanic Black or African American.