Chū
surname · Latin script
Chū is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 28,508 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2010. In Hong Kong it is the 40th most common surname. Recorded meaning: From the Japanese ちゅっ (chu', onomatopoeia).
- GYGuyana1 in 8K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 12K
- FIFinland1 in 28K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). 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
- 319 (measured from records)
- 1 in 8.0K (inferred from the name graph)
28,508 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
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).
Cited for this meaning 2
- Wiktionary
- Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Chū is found
(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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 28,508 | 1 in 12K | 30K | Chu | 319 |
| ES Spain | — | 343 | 1 in 146K | 343 | — | 36 |
| SE Sweden | — | 302 | 1 in 34K | 302 | — | 20 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 271 | 1 in 64K | 271 | Chu | 38 |
| PL Poland | — | 242 | 1 in 158K | 150 | — | 1 |
| FI Finland | — | 201 | 1 in 28K | 201 | — | 9 |
| NO Norway | — | 156 | 1 in 35K | 156 | — | 9 |
| GY Guyana | — | 94 | 1 in 8K | 94 | — | — |
| HK Hong Kong | #40 | — | — | — | Chu | 116 |
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).
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
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)No register attests this spelling yet
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).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Chū?
- 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. After it come Spain, Sweden, Netherlands and Poland; the country table on this page ranks them.
- 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.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ch%C5%ABThe 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” — ranked 1154th in the United States (Census Bureau). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.