Yü
surname · Latin script
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 2 countries
Yü is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Hong Kong it is the 59th most common surname. Recorded meaning: From English u, the English name of the letter U/u.
- USUnited States1 in 6.4K(measured from records)
- FIFinland1 in 7.9K
- NONorway1 in 14K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Yü itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 494 (measured from records)
- 1 in 6.4K (inferred from the name graph)
52,035 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Yu in US United States, CN China, HK Hong Kong and Yuee in ES Spain, AR Argentina.
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)From English u, the English name of the letter U/u.
Cited for this meaning 5
- 25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
- Digital Pāḷi Dictionary
- Wiktionary
- Chinese Surnames Encyclopedia (Section 2)
- Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Yü 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 | #786 | 52,035 | 1 in 6.4K | 66K | Yu | 494 |
| ES Spain | — | 3,106 | 1 in 16K | 3.1K | Yuee | 52 |
| CN China | #875 | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 969K | — | Yu | 153 |
| AR Argentina | — | 1,314 | 1 in 35K | 1.3K | Yuee | 2 |
| FI Finland | — | 701 | 1 in 7.9K | 701 | — | 18 |
| SE Sweden | — | 687 | 1 in 15K | 687 | Yü | 38 |
| NO Norway | — | 404 | 1 in 14K | 404 | — | 26 |
| HK Hong Kong | #59 | ≈13 est. | ≈1 in 571K | — | Yu | 132 |
52,035 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); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)- Yu Lanb. 1921CNChinese actress (1921-2020)
- Ronny Yub. 1950CNHong Kong film director, producer and screenwriter
- Yu Rongguangb. 1958CNChinese actor and film director
- Paul Yub. 1970TWTaiwanese voice actor
- Yu Zheng Changb. 1973TWTaiwanese voice actor
- Yu Zhengb. 1978CNChinese screenwriter
- Yu Yangb. 1986CNChinese badminton player, born 1986
- Yu Dabaob. 1988CNChinese footballer
- Yu Wenxiab. 1989CNChinese beauty queen
- Kelly Yub. 1989CAChinese-Canadian singer and actress
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)3 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 2 countries.
Reference works 1
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
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 Yü mean, and where does it come from?
- From English u, the English name of the letter U/u. Recorded by 25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado and Digital Pāḷi Dictionary and 3 other sources.
- In which country does Yü have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 52 thousand people named Yü, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled yu.
- Where is Yü most common?
- Yü is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 6.4 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Yü?
- In the United States, the national register counted 52,035 people named Yü in 2010, about 1 in 6.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Yü compared with other names?
- In the United States, Yü is the 786th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Yü?
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/y%C3%BCThe 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, “Yü” — the 786th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.