Chu
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: The sound of a kiss
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/tʃu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Chu is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In South Korea it is the 53rd most common surname.
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 175(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 1.9K
- CNChina≈1 in 2.3K
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 Chu 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)
- Sources
- 472 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 175 (inferred from the name graph)
≈600,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Hong Kong, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled 추 in KR South Korea and Chue in VN Vietnam.
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)
nonstandard spelling of chū
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
How Chu is read(measured from records)
Chu is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English56%
The sound of a kiss.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
family name of Ming dynasty of
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Vietnamese12%
to protrude
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Họ gốc; tại Nam Hà đọc trại thành Châu vì kiêng húy chúa Nguyễn Phúc Chu.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
Hán-Việt; tên chúa Nguyễn, cùng bộ thủy.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
- Chinese12%
nonstandard spelling of chū
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish5.4%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Chu in Spanish.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Chu 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈600,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | — | Chu | 87 |
| VN Vietnam | — | ≈200,000 est. | ≈1 in 493 | listed | Chue | 12 |
| KR South Korea | #53 | 60,561as 추 | 1 in 856 | 302K | 추 | 97 |
| HK Hong Kong | #69 | ≈41,000 est. | ≈1 in 175 | — | Chu | 131 |
| US United States | — | 28,508 | 1 in 12K | 30K | Chu | 472 |
| MY Malaysia | #295 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Chu | 110 |
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: KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants; KOSIS — 2015 census surnames; 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Jiajing Emperor of Mingb. 1507CNnot in their usual nameEmperor of the Ming dynasty from 1521 to 1567
- Lu Xunb. 1881CNnot in their usual nameChinese novelist and essayist (1881–1936)
- Zhou Enlaib. 1898CNnot in their usual name1st Premier of the People's Republic of China
- Zhu Rongjib. 1928CNnot in their usual name5th Premier of the People's Republic of China from 1998 to 2003 (1928–2026)
- Hu Jintaob. 1942CNnot in their usual nameformer General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party
- Steven Chub. 1948USAmerican physicist, former United States Secretary of Energy, Nobel laureate (born 1948)
- Chow Yun-fatb. 1955CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actor
- Kelly Hub. 1968USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress
- Jay Choub. 1979TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese pop singer, songwriter, and actor
- Hua MulanCNnot in their usual nameChinese legendary female warrior
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 58 sources across 29 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1K | #7,970 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 827 | #7,970 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1990 | 7 | — |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Chu mean?
- In English, The sound of a kiss.
- Where does the name Chu come from?
- nonstandard spelling of chū Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Chu?
- A machine transcription gives /tʃu/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Chu have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 598 thousand people named Chu in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled chu.
- How common is the name Chu?
- In the United States, the national register counted 28,508 people named Chu in 2010, about 1 in 12 thousand residents.
- How common is Chu compared with other names?
- In South Korea, Chu is the 53rd most common surname of 14,133 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Chu?
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/chuThe 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, “Chu” — the 53rd most common surname in South Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.