Ху

Name: Ху: recorded bearers, distribution and rank
Creator: Mondonomo
Published: 2026-10-13
License: https://mondonomo.ai/tos#rights

surname · Cyrillic script

Meaning: A transliteration of the Mandarin surname 胡 (Hú)

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 2 countries

Ху is a surname written in the Cyrillic script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 69th most common surname.

rarermore common

CNChina≈1 in 195as Xu(inferred from the name graph)
TWTaiwan≈1 in 334as Hu
VNVietnam≈1 in 622as Hoa

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Ху itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

: China (inferred from the name graph)
: 4 (measured from records)
Record sources: 440 (measured from records)
: ≈1 in 195 (inferred from the name graph)

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts

HoaLatin

СюйCyrillic

ჰუGeorgian

ΞουGreek

4 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Xu in US United States, CN China, SG Singapore and 2 more, Hoa in VN Vietnam and Hu in ID Indonesia.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin

A transliteration of the Mandarin surname 胡 (Hú)

Cited for this meaning 1

kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

Ху counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Ху is recorded, by country
Country					Most common spelling	Sources
CN China	#315	≈7,200,000 est.	≈1 in 195	—	Xu	237
VN Vietnam	#79	≈160,000 est.	≈1 in 622	listed	Hoa	217
TW Taiwan	#284	≈71,000 est.	≈1 in 334	—	Xu	102
US United States	#778	25,622as Xu	1 in 13K	44K	Xu	440
ID Indonesia	—	≈17,000 est.	≈1 in 16K	listed	Hu	83
HK Hong Kong	#82	≈6,800 est.	≈1 in 1.1K	—	Xu	97
SG Singapore	#69	≈3,600 est.	≈1 in 1.7K	—	Xu	119

Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Other names spelled this way

Ху is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

Uzbek surname5 spellings in the group
Most recorded in Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan
Also written Khu, Khù, Хў, Хӯ
Mongolian surname3 spellings in the group
Most recorded in China
Also written Khù, Khu
Croatian surname12 spellings in the group
Most recorded in China, United States, Bulgaria, Croatia
Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovenian
Also written Hu, Hü, Hư

3 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses

Ху is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

In kbd, The forty-third letter of the Kabardian alphabet, written in the Cyrillic script.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In yrk, morning
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In ket, heart
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Notable people with this name

Hồ Xuân Hươngb. 1772VNnot in their usual nameVietnamese poet (1772–1822)
Hu Shihb. 1891TWnot in their usual nameChinese scholar, writer and philosopher (1891–1962)
Hu Yaobangb. 1915CNnot in their usual nameChinese politician (1915-1989), former General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party
Gordon Wub. 1935CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong businessman
Hu Jintaob. 1942CNnot in their usual nameformer General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party
Kelly Hub. 1968USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress
Hu Junb. 1968CNnot in their usual nameChinese actor
Hu Jiab. 1973CNnot in their usual nameChinese activist
Hu Bob. 1988CNnot in their usual nameChinese novelist and film director (1988-2017)
Madison Hub. 2002USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Ху under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Ху mean, and where does it come from?: A transliteration of the Mandarin surname 胡 (Hú) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Ху have the most bearers?: Mondonomo estimates about 7.2 million people named Xu in China, more than in any other country we hold.
How common is the name Ху?: In the United States, the national register counted 25,622 people named Xu in 2010, about 1 in 13 thousand residents.
How common is Ху compared with other names?: In China, Ху is the 315th most common surname of 142,871 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Ху?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Query this name via API

curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/%D1%85%D1%83

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of 2026-10-13 and will change as it is rebuilt.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Ху” — the 315th most common surname in China. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Ху parses inside a full name →