Yeow
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Expressing sudden pain or startlement
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/jəow/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Yeow is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- THThailand≈1 in 71Kas เยาว์(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 98Kas Yao
- DKDenmark1 in 226Kas Yao
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 Yeow itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 67 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 71K (inferred from the name graph)
3,398 named Yao, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Thailand, est., as เยาว์
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
12 other spellings are counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Yao in US United States, CN China and ยาว in TH Thailand.
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)
Expressing sudden pain or startlement.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Yeow 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 | 3,398as Yao | 1 in 98K | 11K | Yao | 55 |
| TH Thailand | ≈970 est. | ≈1 in 71K | #513,561 | ยาว | 67 |
| CN China | ≈360 est. | ≈1 in 3.9M | — | Yao | 21 |
| ES Spain | 118as Yao | 1 in 424K | 899 | — | 1 |
| BR Brazil | 55as Yao | 1 in 3.8M | 144 | — | — |
| NL Netherlands | 47as Yau | 1 in 368K | 161 | — | 1 |
| DK Denmark | 26as Yao | 1 in 226K | 81 | — | — |
| FI Finland | 18as Yao | 1 in 310K | 169 | — | — |
3,398 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Eileen Yeowb. 1972SGSingaporean actress
- Pamela YeowGBresearcher, ORCID id # 0000-0003-1154-2684
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 12 sources across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 139 | #128,411 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 118 | #141,140 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
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 Yeow mean, and where does it come from?
- Expressing sudden pain or startlement. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Yeow?
- A machine transcription gives /jəow/ (IPA) for Malay.
- In which country does Yeow have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 3.4 thousand people named Yao, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Yeow?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,398 people named Yao in 2020, about 1 in 98 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Yeow?
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/yeowThe 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, “Yeow”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.