"Tai" definition, meaning, and origin

Proper noun

A local government area of Rivers State, Nigeria.
A female given name from Chinese.
A branch of the Tai-Kadai language family, including Thai, Lao, Shan, and Zhuang.

An ancient city and former polity under the Xia dynasty in present-day Wugong, Xianyang, Shaanxi, China.
- The first ancestor of Zhou tribe was Hou Ji who originally lived in Tai (today's Wugong of Shaanxi), and duke of Liu, his successor, moved to Bin (today's Bin county of Shaanxi), and then passed down to the lord of...
A surname from Chinese.

From the Hanyu Pinyin romanization of the Mandarin pronunciation of Chinese 邰 (Tái) and 斄 /𭤎 (Tái).

Alternative form of Dai.
- Five short stories concern land reform, elections in the border region, and anti-Japanese activities:[...] e) “Feng-pao Tai-hsien-chʻeng” 風暴代縣城 (Storms in Tai County). A twenty-year-old anti-Japanese hero does not...
- Kuang-wu 廣武 lay in the southwestern part of today's Tai County 代縣, Shansi; Wu and Lu, 93.3392n. - 1994 [145–86 BCE], Ssu-ma Ch’ien, edited by William Nienhauser, The Grand Scribe's Records, Indiana University Press,...
- Kou-chu Mountains: today called Yen-men Mountains, a mountain range located to the southeast of Ma-yi, near present-day Tai county, in Shansi (Chung-kuo li-shih ti-t'u chi, 2:17-18, 3-10). - 2002, Ancient China and Its...

From the Wade–Giles romanization of the Mandarin pronunciation of Chinese 代 (dài).

A surname.
- The company on Nov. 3 last year asked an employee surnamed Tai (戴) to deliver 10 barrels of silane — a flammable alkaline substance — from Pingtung County’s Chaojhou Township (潮州) to Sinyuan Township (新園) without...
- Katherine Tai, President Biden’s pick for United States trade representative, promised lawmakers during her confirmation hearing on Thursday that she would work with Congress to help reinvigorate the economy and...

From the Wade–Giles romanization of the Mandarin 戴 (Dài), as well as from its Cantonese pronunciation Daai³.

A descendant of speakers of a common proto-Tai language, including subpopulations which no longer speak a Tai language.
- The Tais first appeared in history in Yunnan, and from thence they migrated into Upper Burma. The earliest swarms appear to have entered that tract about two thousand years ago, and were small in number. - 1901, Census...