Pho
surname · Latin script
Meaning: A Vietnamese soup with a beef base, typically served with rice noodles and optionally beef or chicken
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Pho is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Vietnam than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 250K(measured from records)
- VNVietnam≈1 in 26K
- ATAustria≈1 in 115K
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.
- Vietnam (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 214 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 26K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,800 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Vietnam, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
A Vietnamese soup with a beef base, typically served with rice noodles and optionally beef or chicken.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pho 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VN Vietnam | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 26K | listed | — | 2 |
| US United States | 1,333 | 1 in 250K | 1.5K | Pho | 214 |
| ID Indonesia | ≈950 est. | ≈1 in 283K | listed | — | 1 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | ≈860 est. | ≈1 in 118K | — | Pho | 2 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈240 est. | ≈1 in 276K | 45 | Pho | 29 |
| CA Canada | ≈240 est. | ≈1 in 160K | — | Pho | 69 |
| AU Australia | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 157K | — | Pho | 76 |
| AT Austria | ≈77 est. | ≈1 in 115K | — | Pho | 8 |
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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register). 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)
Pho is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Lao, v. cover wp. lu /phó: V (Pali) bot, the ed or bo tree, Ficus religiosa L. (Vidal)
as a wordLao-English Dictionary
In sit-pro, hatch, egg
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
In German, pho (Vietnamese rice noodle soup)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In zom, shield
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.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 21 sources across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.5K | #18,440 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.3K | #20,057 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1K | #23,530 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 45 | #54,231 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Pho mean, and where does it come from?
- A Vietnamese soup with a beef base, typically served with rice noodles and optionally beef or chicken. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Pho have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.8 thousand people named Pho in Vietnam, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Pho?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,333 people named Pho in 2010, about 1 in 250 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Pho?
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/phoThe 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, “Pho”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.