Soo
given name · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Soo is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Malaysia than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Recent coinage, a fanciful variant spell- ing of pSue. Sophia ° From the Greek word meaning ‘wis- dom’.
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 1.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- SGSingapore≈1 in 4K
- USUnited States1 in 92K
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
- 307 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈31,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Malaysia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Recent coinage, a fanciful variant spell- ing of pSue. Sophia ° From the Greek word meaning ‘wis- dom’. The Eastern cult of St Sophia arose as a result of misinterpretation of the phrase Hagia Sophia ‘holy wisdom’ as if it meant ‘St Sophia’. The name became popular in England in the 17th and 18th centuries. The heroine of Fielding’s novel Tom Jones (1749) is called Sophia Weston. In recent years, its popularity
Sources 2
- A concise dictionary of first names
- Wiktionary
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Soo 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 | #324 | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Soo | 99 |
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Soo | 4 |
| CN China | — | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 85K | — | Soo | 16 |
| AO Angola | — | ≈5,100 est. | ≈1 in 6.4K | — | Soo | 3 |
| US United States | — | 3,613 | 1 in 92K | 2.6K | Soo | 307 |
| SG Singapore | #451 | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 4K | — | Soo | 119 |
| HK Hong Kong | — | ≈350 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Soo | 40 |
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. 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)
Soo is also recorded in 6 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
English: fanciful variant spelling of SUE .
as a word
In Finnish, tsk, tut-tut (expression of disapproval or holding back)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Galician, first-person singular present indicative of soar
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In gv, to soak, soak up, suck, extract
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In urj-fin-pro, swamp, marsh, bog
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swahili, hundred shilling
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)
- Penn Sub. 1861USnot in their usual namefirst Korean graduate of a US college or university
- Su Muy Keyb. 1927MXnot in their usual nameMexican vedette and exotic dancer (c. 1927–1951)
- Soo Linb. 1950TWTaiwanese badminton player
- Ma Su Zar Zar Htay Yeeb. 1979MMnot in their usual nameMyanmar harpist, textbook author
- Soo GarayCACanadian actress
- Carolyn LamSGnot in their usual nameSingapore-born cardiologist
- Soo Youn Baeresearcher
- Soo Jin YangKRresearcher (ORCID 0000-0001-7892-7648)
- Soo Rin KimKRresearcher
- Soo AlemanSEresearcher
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)
Attested in 46 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.6K | #4,930 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 969 | #4,930 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2004 | 5 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1994 | 5 | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Soo mean, and where does it come from?
- Recent coinage, a fanciful variant spell- ing of pSue. Sophia ° From the Greek word meaning ‘wis- dom’. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names and Wiktionary.
- Is Soo a male or female name?
- Soo is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Soo have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 31 thousand people named Soo in Malaysia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled soo.
- How common is the name Soo?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,613 people named Soo in 2020, about 1 in 92 thousand residents.
- How common is Soo compared with other names?
- In Malaysia, Soo is the 324th most common given name of 388,685 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Soo?
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/sooThe 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, “Soo” — the 324th most common given name in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.