Tao (surname)

Tao is the pinyin romanization of the Chinese surname 陶 (Táo). It ranked 31st among the Song-era Hundred Family Surnames.

Tào is also a Vietnamese surname derived from the Chinese surname Cao (Chữ Nôm: 曹).

Origin

Various Chinese Tao family from;

Romanization

Tao was romanized T'ao under the Wade-Giles system, although it was common to omit the apostrophe. It is romanized To, Tou and Tow in Cantonese; Tô in Minnan; Tau, Tow in Teochew; and Tháu in Gan.

The Vietnamese surname formerly written as 陶 in Chữ Nôm is now written Đào; the Korean surname formerly written as 陶 in Hanja is now written 도 and romanized Do; the same surname in Kanji is romanized Tō in Japanese.

Distribution

Tao was the 82nd-most-common surname in mainland China, but it was unlisted among the 100 most common Taiwanese surnames.

Tao (comics)

T.A.O. is a fictional character in the Wildstorm universe.

Fictional character biography

The Tactical Augmented Organism was created by Optigen, a subsidiary of the Halo Corporation, on behalf of International Operations. As a child, he grew at an amazing rate. The scientists working on him thought that he was imprisoned in his test tube, but at nights he would sneak out and use the lab's computers to learn more about the world outside.

When Savant and Mister Majestic were reforming the WildC.A.Ts, Savant read the files on TAO. The scientist of Optigen was unwilling to let TAO go until TAO handed him a note with several numbers on it. The scientist immediately agreed to release TAO. When asked what the numbers meant, TAO explained to his new teammates that the top one was the phone number of the scientist's wife, the other four were the phone numbers of the scientist's mistresses. Despite seemingly having no superhuman powers, TAO's intelligence and manipulative nature appeared to be quite an asset to the new WildC.A.Ts. He manipulated Mister Majestic into agreeing to recruit the murderous cyborg Ladytron.

Tao (album)

Tao is an RIAA Gold-certified album by Rock singer Rick Springfield. It was released in 1985 on RCA Records. It was belatedly released on CD in 1990.

Track listing

All songs written by Rick Springfield, except where noted.

Production

With Tao, Springfield decided to experiment with new wave and synthrock. Springfield noted in a 2012 interview, "Tao had a lot of European influences and I perhaps went a little bit too far in that direction. The production was more European orientated, with the massive synths and that stuff actually did it really well in Europe, especially in Germany, 'Celebrate Youth' was a hit." Springfield considers Tao to be his finest album to date. "We just had a lot of new ideas. It is probably the one I experimented on the most. Whatever I thought of we tried it. It was just when sampling was just starting, we got really into the drum sampling. But we started on just a DMX. A little DMX drum machine, all the original drum tracks were laid down on that, and then we triggered other drum samples from that. It was built up track by track. That is still my favorite album." Springfield recalls, "I had stopped listening to American rock by 1984. In fact, I was getting increasingly interested in what was going on in other types of music, especially with artists who were English."

Tao (disambiguation)

Tao is a metaphysical concept found in Taoism, Confucianism, and more generally in ancient Chinese philosophy.

Tao may also refer to:

Geography

People and language

People

Science and technology