Yau
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Yau is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country. In Hong Kong it is the 77th most common surname. Recorded meaning: Furnace.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 18K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 110K
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 2.3M
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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 311 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 18K (inferred from the name graph)
≈12,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Nigeria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Furnace
Sources 1
- A Vocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Yau 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | #113 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Yau | 45 |
| US United States | — | 3,033 | 1 in 110K | 3.3K | Yau | 311 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 161 | 1 in 107K | 161 | Yau | 23 |
| FI Finland | — | 60 | 1 in 93K | 60 | — | 2 |
| ES Spain | — | 48 | 1 in 1M | 48 | — | 15 |
| DK Denmark | — | 30 | 1 in 196K | 30 | — | 2 |
| HK Hong Kong | #77 | ≈3 est. | ≈1 in 2.3M | — | Yau | 120 |
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; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Yau is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In wuu, Shake (set in motion)
as a wordA Vocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect
In wuu, Scull (a boat)
as a wordA Vocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect
In wuu, Beckon
as a wordAn English-Chinese Vocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect
In wuu, Eemote
as a wordA Vocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect
In wuu, Raffle
as a wordAn English-Chinese Vocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect
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)
- Qiu Chujib. 1148CNnot in their usual namefounder of the Longmen school of Quanzhen Taoism
- Yao Wenyuanb. 1931CNnot in their usual nameChinese politician (1931–2005)
- Andrew Chi-Chih Yaob. 1946CNnot in their usual namecomputer scientist and computational theorist
- Shing-Tung Yaub. 1949USAmerican mathematician from Hong Kong
- Frances Yaob. 1950USnot in their usual nameChinese-born American computer scientist
- Qiu Xiaolongb. 1953CNnot in their usual nameChinese-American writer
- Herman Yaub. 1961CNHong Kong filmmaker and cinematographer
- Chingmy Yaub. 1968CNHong Kong actress
- Yao Mingb. 1980CNnot in their usual nameChinese basketball player (born 1980)
- Roy Chiub. 1981TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese actor and singer
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 33 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.3K | #9,454 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3K | #10,565 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.7K | #10,881 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 161 | #12,751 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 60 | #19,572 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 48 | #46,016 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 48 | #45,681 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 30 | #16,453 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Yau mean, and where does it come from?
- Furnace Recorded by A Vocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect.
- In which country does Yau have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 12 thousand people named Yau in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled yau.
- How common is the name Yau?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,033 people named Yau in 2010, about 1 in 110 thousand residents.
- How common is Yau compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Yau is the 113th most common surname of 346,007 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Yau?
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/yauThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Yau” — the 113th most common surname in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.