Tylar

Popularity over time

Name story

Tylar is a phonetic respelling of Tyler, an occupational surname turned given name that traces back to the Old French tieuleor and ultimately to the Latin tegularius — one who works with tegula, roof tiles. The medieval Tyler was a craftsman who laid tiles on floors and roofs, a skilled trade essential to permanent architecture, and like many English occupational surnames (Cooper, Smith, Mason, Fletcher), it gradually detached from its occupational meaning and became a family name carried by descendants long after the original trade was forgotten. The transformation from surname to first name accelerated in the United States during the mid-twentieth century, driven in part by a broader American fashion for surnames as given names that felt strong, ungendered, and distinctly modern.

The name received a significant boost from John Tyler, the tenth President of the United States, who took office in 1841 following William Henry Harrison's death — the first vice president to assume the presidency this way, a fact that lodged his surname firmly in American civic memory. The Tyler/Tylar sound also benefits from its resemblance to the word tailor in some regional accents, and from a general American fondness for the -er/-ar ending that characterizes dozens of popular contemporary names. The Tylar spelling, substituting an a for the final e, gives the name a slightly more individualized look on paper, a common American practice for signaling that a name belongs to a particular child rather than a generic category.

It has been used across gender lines, though it skews male. Parents choosing Tylar today often appreciate its familiar sound combined with its distinctive orthography — recognizable at a glance but unmistakably personalized.