Joo
given name · Latin script
Meaning: archaic spelling variant of Jo (see Jo)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/d͡ʒˈoo/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Joo is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Malaysia than in any other country, where it is the 10th most common given name.
- PTPortugal≈1 in 1.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 4K
- IDIndonesia≈1 in 50K
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.
- Malaysia (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 79 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈8,300 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Portugal, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
archaic spelling variant of Jo (see Jo).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Joo 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MY Malaysia | #10 | ≈8,300 est. | ≈1 in 4K | — | Joo | 78 |
| CN China | — | ≈7,300 est. | ≈1 in 191K | — | Joo | 9 |
| PT Portugal | #323 | ≈7,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Joo | 32 |
| ID Indonesia | #9 | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 50K | — | Joo | 48 |
| FI Finland | — | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 37 | — | 2 |
| US United States | — | 1,663 | 1 in 200K | 3.3K | Joo | 79 |
| NL Netherlands | — | ≈840 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Joo | 7 |
| SG Singapore | #720 | ≈680 est. | ≈1 in 9.2K | — | Joo | 64 |
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; DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)
Joo is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
variant of Chu.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Finnish, yeah, yes
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)
- Gyeongjongb. 955not in their usual namethe 5th king of Goryeo (955–981, r. 975–981)
- Joo Krausb. 1966DEGerman trumpeter
- Kim Joo-Jinb. 1986KRSouth Korean judoka
- Yoon Joob. 1989KRSouth Korean actress
- Kim Ju-sikb. 1992KPnot in their usual nameNorth Korean pair skater
- Taehab. 1995KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean singer, member of Berry Good
- Joo Hyun-myeongb. 1997KRSouth Korean race walker
- Chea Song-joob. 1998KRSouth Korean figure skater
- Ju Lib. 2000CNnot in their usual nameMaterials Science researcher
- Joo Han Kimb. 2000KRresearcher
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 42 sources across 23 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1K | #8,666 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 654 | #8,666 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 37 | #8,709 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 30 | #12,491 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1990 | 5 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1986 | 5 | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Joo mean, and where does it come from?
- archaic spelling variant of Jo (see Jo). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Joo?
- A machine transcription gives /d͡ʒˈoo/ (IPA) for Indonesian.
- Is Joo a male or female name?
- Joo 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 Joo have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 8.3 thousand people named Joo in Malaysia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled joo.
- How common is the name Joo?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,663 people named Joo in 2020, about 1 in 200 thousand residents.
- How common is Joo compared with other names?
- In Malaysia, Joo is the 10th most common given name of 388,685 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Joo?
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/jooThe 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, “Joo” — the 10th most common given name in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.