Thiam is a both a surname of West African origin and an element in
Chinese given names.
Surname
Origins and statistics
As a surname, Thiam is found among the
Fula and
Wolof people of Senegal and nearby countries, and originated from a family of
goldsmiths.[1][2] In the modern
Fula language and
Wolof language orthographies, it is spelled Caam. Thiam is one of a number of older spellings which originated during
French colonial rule; others include Tyam, Chiam, and Cham.[3][4] This surname is spelled Thiam in
Senegal, and Cham in the
Gambia. The surname originated from
Toucouleur or
Laobe people, and is found among
Pulaar language speakers. It is not authentically Wolof, and only made its way to the Wolof through Wolof mixture.[5]
French government statistics show 508 people with the surname Thiam born in France from 1991 to 2000, 532 from 1981 to 1990, 196 from 1971 to 1980, and 143 in earlier time periods.[6] The
2010 United States Census found 935 people with the surname Thiam, making it the 26,171st-most-common surname in the country. This represented an increase from 494 people (41,522nd-most-common) in the
2000 census. In both censuses, about nine-tenths of the bearers of the surname identified as Black, and roughly two to three percent as White or Asian.[7]
Government officials and politicians
Awa Thiam (born 1936), Senegalese government official in the Ministry of Women and Children
Thiam can be a romanisation, based on the pronunciation in different
varieties of Chinese, of multiple
Chinese characters. Chinese given names frequently consist of two characters, as in the names of all of the people listed below. The character in common in all of the two-character names below means "to increase" (添); it can be spelled as Thiam based on its pronunciation in
Hakka or various
Southern Min dialects (including
Chaoshan).[8][9]
Gan Thiam Poh (颜添宝; born 1963), Singaporean opposition politician and businessman
^Crane, Louise; Mohraz, Jane E. (1982). African Names: People and Places. African Studies Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. p. 6.
OCLC1086579564.
^Simpson, Andrew (2008). language and national identity in Africa (paperback ed.). British library: oxford linguistics. pp. 86, 90, 91.
ISBN978-0-19-928675-1.
^MacIver, Donald (1904).
"85 水". A Hakka index to the Chinese-English dictionary of Herbert A. Giles, and to the Syllabic dictionary of Chinese of S. Wells Williams. Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press. p. 65.
^Fielde, Adele M. (1883).
"添". A pronouncing and defining dictionary of the Swatow dialect, arranged according to syllables and tones. Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press. p. 587. Additionally see
"添". mogher.com. Retrieved 15 February 2020.
Name list
This page or section lists people that share the same
given name or the same
family name. If an
internal link led you here, you may wish to change that link to point directly to the intended article.