Chõū

given name · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Chõū is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From French chou (“cabbage”); compare French pâte à choux (“choux pastry”). Doublet of caulis, cole, and kale.

rarermore common
  • MYMalaysia≈1 in 13K(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 34K
  • HKHong Kong≈1 in 3.3K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈240,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
387 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 3.3K (inferred from the name graph)

Hong Kong, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

ChõūLatin(measured from records)
초우Hangul(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Chou in US United States, MY Malaysia, CN China and 1 more, Çhoù in DZ Algeria and Chöu in CM Cameroon.

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(measured from records)

From French chou (“cabbage”); compare French pâte à choux (“choux pastry”). Doublet of caulis, cole, and kale.

Sources 4

  • Wiktionary
  • Chinese Surnames Encyclopedia (Section 2)
  • Deshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)
  • Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)

Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Chõū 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 Chõū is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈240,000 est.≈1 in 5.8K—Chou60
US United States—9,8341 in 34K11KChou387
DZ Algeria—≈5,600 est.≈1 in 7.6K—Çhoù8
CM Cameroon—≈3,500 est.≈1 in 8K—Chöu10
MY Malaysia—≈2,500 est.≈1 in 13K—Chou47
HK Hong Kong#398≈2,200 est.≈1 in 3.3K—Chou53

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Chõū 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 Chõū mean, and where does it come from?
From French chou (“cabbage”); compare French pâte à choux (“choux pastry”). Doublet of caulis, cole, and kale. Recorded by Wiktionary and Chinese Surnames Encyclopedia (Section 2) and 2 other sources.
Is Chõū a male or female name?
Chõū is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
In which country does Chõū have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 242 thousand people named Chõū in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled chou.
How common is the name Chõū?
In the United States, the national register counted 9,834 people named Chõū in 2010, about 1 in 34 thousand residents.
How common is Chõū compared with other names?
In Hong Kong, Chõū is the 398th most common surname of 8,142 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Chõū?

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

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ch%C3%B5%C5%AB

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 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, “Chõū” — the 398th most common surname in Hong Kong. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Chõū parses inside a full name →