Au
loc · Latin script
Meaning, in French: contraction of à le (“to the, for the, at the”)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Au is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Vietnam than in any other country.
- CACanada≈1 in 14K(inferred from the name graph)
- DEGermany≈1 in 45K
- USUnited States1 in 47K
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
- 359 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 10K (inferred from the name graph)
≈9,400 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Vietnam, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Âû in AU Australia.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from OHG ouwa 'water-rich land, island, peninsula'; often with umlaut
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
How Au is read(measured from records)
Au is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- French17%
contraction of à le (“to the, for the, at the”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English8.1%
Abbreviation of atomic unit.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German5.2%
from OHG ouwa 'water-rich land, island, peninsula'; often with umlaut
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
ouch
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of German
apocopic form of Aue
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Au 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 | ≈9,400 est. | ≈1 in 10K | listed | — | 1 |
| US United States | 7,148 | 1 in 47K | 7.5K | Au | 359 |
| CA Canada | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Au | 200 |
| AU Australia | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 1 | Âû | 165 |
| DE Germany | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 45K | — | Au | 107 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 40K | — | Au | 42 |
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; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present). 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)
Au is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In cdo, explanation of the meaning, (gii Buddha, (cid-sék). to confer, to bestow, solder, tin, pewter, gifts, fine linen, S. heaven bestowed felicity. a soldering-iron
as a wordDictionary of the Foochow 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)
- Soon-Tek Ohb. 1932USnot in their usual nameKorean-American actor (1932-2018)
- Oh Yeong-sub. 1944KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actor (born 1944)
- Oh Se-hoonb. 1961KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean politician
- Oh Kwang-rokb. 1962KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actor
- Oh Dal-sub. 1968KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actor
- Oh Jung-seb. 1977KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actor
- Oh Beom-seokb. 1984KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean association football player
- Oh Se-hunb. 1994KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean rapper, singer-songwriter, dancer, model and actor
- Oh Ha-youngb. 1996KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean singer
- Oh Hyeon-gyub. 2001KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean footballer
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 35 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.5K | #4,606 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 7.1K | #4,919 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 6.2K | #5,195 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- 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
- 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
- Where does the name Au come from?
- from OHG ouwa 'water-rich land, island, peninsula'; often with umlaut Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- What does the name Au mean?
- In French, contraction of à le (“to the, for the, at the”)
- In which country does Au have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 9.4 thousand people named Au in Vietnam, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Au?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,148 people named Au in 2010, about 1 in 47 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Au?
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/auThe 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, “Au”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.