Chū

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/tʃuː/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Chū 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 40th most common surname. Recorded meaning: From the Japanese ちゅっ (chu', onomatopoeia).

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 12K(measured from records)
  • GYGuyana1 in 8K
  • FIFinland1 in 28K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

28,508 people, 2010

Sources
319 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 8.0K (inferred from the name graph)

Guyana

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Chu in US United States, HK Hong Kong, NL Netherlands.

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 the Japanese ちゅっ (chu', onomatopoeia).

Sources 2

  • Wiktionary
  • Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)

Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Chū 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.

Where Chū is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—28,5081 in 12K30KChu319
ES Spain—3431 in 146K343—36
SE Sweden—3021 in 34K302—20
NL Netherlands—2711 in 64K271Chu38
PL Poland—2421 in 158K150—1
FI Finland—2011 in 28K201—9
NO Norway—1561 in 35K156—9
GY Guyana—941 in 8K94——
HK Hong Kong#40———Chu116

28,508 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; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Chū is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name13 spellings in the group

    Also written Chử, Chü, Chủ, Čhū, Chü̕

  • English surname55 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, South Korea, Australia, Canada

    Languages: English, Korean, German

    Also written Chu, 추, Chue, Ch'U, Chü

3 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

  • Chu YushiSong dynasty person CBDB = 40117
  • Chu GaoMing dynasty person CBDB = 357006
  • Chu JinzhongMing dynasty person CBDB = 284130
  • Chu HaoMing dynasty person CBDB = 284131
  • Chu ZhenMing dynasty person CBDB = 284132
  • Chu ShengMing dynasty person CBDB = 284136
  • Chu DanMing dynasty person CBDB = 284137
  • Chu GaoMing dynasty person CBDB = 127695
  • Chu WeiSong dynasty person CBDB=40115
  • Chu XieSong dynasty person CBDB = 40116

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)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 1 sources across 0 countries.

Reference works 1

  • 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 Chū mean, and where does it come from?
From the Japanese ちゅっ (chu', onomatopoeia). Recorded by Wiktionary and Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007).
How do you pronounce Chū?
A machine transcription gives /tʃuː/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Chū have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 29 thousand people named Chū, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled chu.
Where is Chū most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Chū is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 8.0 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Chū?
In the United States, the national register counted 28,508 people named Chū in 2010, about 1 in 12 thousand residents.
How common is Chū compared with other names?
In Hong Kong, Chū is the 40th most common surname of 8,142 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Chū?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ch%C5%AB

The 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, “Chū” — the 40th most common surname in Hong Kong. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Chū parses inside a full name →