Yǒu

given name · Latin script

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

Yǒu is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: ‘Friend’. Yu @ 1%Jade’. Jade is a symbol of purity, longevity, or immortality, also of feminine beauty. 2 ‘Rain’.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 139K(measured from records)
  • SESweden1 in 144K
  • NLNetherlands1 in 320K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

2,385 people, 2020

Sources
75 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 139K (inferred from the name graph)

United States

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled You in ES Spain.

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)

‘Friend’. Yu @ 1%Jade’. Jade is a symbol of purity, longevity, or immortality, also of feminine beauty. 2 ‘Rain’.

Sources 5

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

Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Yǒu 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 Yǒu is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States2,3851 in 139K8.3K—75
SE Sweden711 in 144K71—1
NL Netherlands541 in 320K36—8
ES Spain351 in 1.4M385You28
CR Costa Rica151 in 340K15—8
IS Iceland11 in 351K1——

2,385 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)

0500100015002000Liu You, b. 250Feng Youlan, b. 1895Youzhong Shi, b. 1902Lau Yew, b. 1915Anthony Chan, b. 1952You Xie, b. 1958Yū Kikkawa, b. 1992
  • Liu Youb. 250Chinese prince
  • Feng Youlanb. 1895CNnot in their usual nameChinese philosopher and historian (1895–1990)
  • Youzhong Shib. 1902CNnot in their usual nameborn:1902-02-17|died:2001-12-00|; Shi, Youzhong 1902-2001; Shih, Vincent Yu-chung; Shih, Vincent Yu-chung, 1902-2001; 施友忠, (文學), 1902-2000; Shih, Yu-chung, 1902-....; Shih, Vincent Y.C.
  • Lau Yewb. 1915MYnot in their usual nameHigh-ranking commander of the Malayan Communist Party
  • Anthony Chanb. 1952CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actor; drummer (*1952)
  • You Xieb. 1958DEChinese-German politician and writer
  • Yū Kikkawab. 1992JPnot in their usual nameJapanese idol, singer and actress
  • Li Youperson, CBDB = 187066
  • Wang YouMing dynasty person CBDB = 66713
  • Chen YouMing dynasty person CBDB = 67207

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)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Yǒu 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 Yǒu mean, and where does it come from?
‘Friend’. Yu @ 1%Jade’. Jade is a symbol of purity, longevity, or immortality, also of feminine beauty. 2 ‘Rain’. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names and Wiktionary and 3 other sources.
Is Yǒu a male or female name?
Yǒu is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
In which country does Yǒu have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 2.4 thousand people named Yǒu, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Yǒu most common?
Yǒu is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 139 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Yǒu?
In the United States, the national register counted 2,385 people named Yǒu in 2020, about 1 in 139 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Yǒu?

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

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/y%C7%92u

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, “Yǒu”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Yǒu parses inside a full name →