Wǔ
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Hanyu Pinyin reading of 五
Wǔ is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Hong Kong it is the 22nd most common surname.
- TWTaiwan≈1 in 47(inferred from the name graph)
- CNChina≈1 in 185
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 222
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)
- #844 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 516 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 47 (inferred from the name graph)
≈7,500,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Taiwan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Wu in US United States, CN China, TW Taiwan and 4 more.
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)Hanyu Pinyin reading of 五
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 22 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Wǔ 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 | #316 | ≈7,500,000 est. | ≈1 in 185 | — | Wu | 241 |
| TW Taiwan | #98 | ≈510,000 est. | ≈1 in 47 | — | Wu | 211 |
| US United States | #394 | 71,721 | 1 in 4.6K | 98K | Wu | 516 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈35,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.5K | — | Wu | 106 |
| HK Hong Kong | #22 | ≈33,000 est. | ≈1 in 222 | — | Wu | 136 |
| AU Australia | #102 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | 4 | Wu | 246 |
| SG Singapore | #52 | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Wu | 154 |
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; Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM). 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)- Wu Zixub. 526CNChinese Wu kingdom general and politician (died 484 BC)
- Wu Shihuob. 559father of Wu Zetian
- Wu Zetianb. 624CNfounding empress of Zhou dynasty (r. 690–705); de facto ruler of Tang dynasty from 665 to 690
- Wu Lien-tehb. 1879MYMalaysian physician (1879–1960)
- Vu Van Maub. 1914VNnot in their usual namePrime Minister of South Vietnam (1914-1998)
- Wu Liangyongb. 1922CNChinese urban planner
- Sheryl WuDunnb. 1959USnot in their usual nameAmerican journalist and executive
- Philip Ngb. 1977CNnot in their usual nameAmerican actor based in Hong Kong
- Wu Leib. 1991CNChinese footballer
- Ng Ka Longb. 1994CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong badminton player
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
(measured from records)1 register or reference work attests this spelling, across 0 countries.
Reference works 1
- Wikipedia surname tokens
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 Wǔ mean, and where does it come from?
- Hanyu Pinyin reading of 五 Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Wǔ have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 7.5 million people named Wǔ in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wu.
- How common is the name Wǔ?
- In the United States, the national register counted 71,721 people named Wǔ in 2010, about 1 in 4.6 thousand residents.
- How common is Wǔ compared with other names?
- In China, Wǔ is the 316th most common surname of 142,871 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Wǔ?
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/w%C7%94The 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, “Wǔ” — the 316th most common surname in China. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.