Tae (Korean surname)

Tae, also spelled Tai or Thae, is a rare Korean family name. It is written with a hanja character meaning "great".

Clans
As a rare Korean family name, Tae is written with only one hanja, meaning "great". They are a noble clan directly descended from the royal family of the Balhae dynasty. The clan ancestor is Dae Jung-sang, the father of the founder of Balhae, Dae Jo-young. The 2000 South Korean Census found 8,165 people with the family name Tae. In a study by the National Institute of the Korean Language based on 2007 application data for South Korean passports, it was found that 28.5% of people with that surname spelled it in Latin letters as Tai in their passports, vs. 57.1% as Tae. People with this surname trace their origins to several bon-gwan, including Namwon and Yeongsun in what is now South Korea and Hyopgye in what is now North Korea.

Notable people
People with this family name include:
 * T'ae Kŭm-ch'wi (fl. 1253–1260), Goryeo military commander, founder of the Yeongsun Tae clan
 * Tae Wan-son (born 1915 -1988), South Korean politician and businessman who served as minister of Construction Department.
 * Thae Byong-ryol (1916 - 1986), North Korean general
 * Thae Jong-su (born 1936), North Korean politician
 * Tae Hyun-sil (born 1941), South Korean actress
 * Thae Hyong-chol (born 1953), North Korean politician
 * Thae Yong-ho (born 1962), North Korean diplomat who defected to South Korea in 2016
 * Tae Hang-ho (born 1983), South Korean actor
 * Tae Yoon (born 1992), South Korean football player in India