Cu
loc · Latin script
Meaning: Name of the letter q
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Cu is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Vietnam than in any other country.
- VNVietnam≈1 in 3.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- GTGuatemala≈1 in 4.1K
- NONorway1 in 161K
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
- 105 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈31,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Vietnam, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Cú in US United States, GT Guatemala.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Name of the letter q
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cu 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 | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.2K | listed | Cu | 105 |
| GT Guatemala | ≈4,200 est. | ≈1 in 4.1K | — | Cú | 25 |
| IN India | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 608K | 1 | — | 7 |
| US United States | 768 | 1 in 433K | 834 | Cú | 85 |
| ES Spain | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 307K | — | Cu | 22 |
| NO Norway | 34 | 1 in 161K | 34 | — | 2 |
| FI Finland | 25 | 1 in 223K | 25 | — | 2 |
| IS Iceland | ≈2 est. | ≈1 in 194K | listed | — | — |
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; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls). 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)
Cu 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 cdo, pleasant, to enrich, to nourish, to moisten, many, much, black
as a wordDictionary of the Foochow Dialect
In cdo, a minister, a courtier, a statesman, a servant, to serve, R
as a wordDictionary of the Foochow Dialect
In cau-nkh-pro, 1 oat flour 2 flour made from roasted corn
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
In sit-pro, burn, bake
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
In sit-pro, fish
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
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)
- Zu Maob. 200not in their usual nameChinese general during the Han dynasty
- Zu Chongzhib. 429not in their usual nameChinese mathematician-astronomer
- Zu Gengzhib. 480not in their usual nameChinese mathematician
- Zu Yongb. 699CNnot in their usual nameChinese poet
- Zu Dashoub. 1550CNnot in their usual nameChinese General
- Zu Shuyaob. 1614not in their usual nameQing dynasty person CBDB = 357001
- Zu Fengb. 1974CNnot in their usual nameChinese actor
- Zu Lijunb. 1989CNnot in their usual nameChinese swimmer
- Zu Tingnot in their usual nameChinese Ofiicial
- Cheng Junot in their usual nameSong dynasty person CBDB = 36506
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 21 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 834 | #30,066 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 768 | #30,420 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 564 | #37,200 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 34 | #32,575 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 25 | #40,118 |
| 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
- 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 Cu mean, and where does it come from?
- Name of the letter q Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Cu have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 31 thousand people named Cu in Vietnam, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cu.
- How common is the name Cu?
- In the United States, the national register counted 768 people named Cu in 2010, about 1 in 433 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Cu?
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/cuThe 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, “Cu”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.