Zou
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Chinese: nonstandard spelling of zōu
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/zu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Zou is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 74K(measured from records)
- FIFinland1 in 53K
- ESSpain1 in 63K
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)
- Sources
- 279 (measured from records)
- 1 in 53K (inferred from the name graph)
4,493 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
An indigenous people living along the frontier of India and Burma.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Zou is read(measured from records)
Zou is one spelling over 3 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.
- Chinese38%
nonstandard spelling of zōu
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English32%
An indigenous people living along the frontier of India and Burma.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French5.8%
shoo, let's go!
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Zou 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 4,493 | 1 in 74K | 7.8K | Zou | 279 |
| ES Spain | — | 790 | 1 in 63K | 790 | — | 20 |
| IN India | — | 312 | 1 in 4.3M | 312 | Zou | 45 |
| PL Poland | — | 164 | 1 in 233K | 99 | — | 1 |
| SE Sweden | — | 140 | 1 in 73K | 140 | — | 11 |
| FI Finland | — | 106 | 1 in 53K | 106 | — | 2 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 65 | 1 in 129K | 65 | — | 5 |
| HK Hong Kong | #878 | — | — | — | Zou | 25 |
4,493 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Zou 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 och, to hasten forward, bring forward, offer, make a report, play music
as a wordSchuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)
In Luxembourgish, adverbial form of the preposition zu (“in, at”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Dutch, singular past indicative of zullen
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(measured from records)
- Zou Yanb. 305Zhou Dynasty philosopher
- Zou Rongb. 1885CNChinese writer (1885–1905)
- Zou Taofenb. 1895CNChinese journalist (1895–1944)
- Raymond Chowb. 1927CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong film producer (1927–2018)
- Zou Jingzhib. 1952CNChinese playwright
- Olivia Chowb. 1957CAnot in their usual nameCanadian politician
- Matt Chowb. 1968CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong screenwriter, director, actor and producer
- Zou Shimingb. 1981CNChinese boxer
- Zou Kaib. 1988CNChinese artistic gymnast
- Zou Jingyuanb. 1998CNChinese gymnast
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 35 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.8K | #4,435 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 4.5K | #7,408 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.8K | #14,783 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 795 | #199 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 790 | #5,462 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 790 | #5,453 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 312 | #13,020 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 140 | #5,527 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 106 | #12,260 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 99 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 99 | #29,916 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 65 | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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
- Where does the name Zou come from?
- An indigenous people living along the frontier of India and Burma. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How common is the name Zou?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,493 people named Zou in 2010, about 1 in 74 thousand residents.
- How common is Zou compared with other names?
- In Hong Kong, Zou is the 878th most common surname of 8,142 surnames recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Zou?
- A machine transcription gives /zu/ (IPA) for Chinese.
- What does the name Zou mean?
- In Chinese, nonstandard spelling of zōu
- In which country does Zou have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 4.5 thousand people named Zou, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled zou.
- Where is Zou most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Zou is densest in Finland — about 1 in 53 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
What do you want to know about Zou?
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/zouThe 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, “Zou” — the 878th most common surname in Hong Kong. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.