Niu
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A tall pole with yardarms from which hung ropes, circled by worshippers in the Pai Mārire religious movement
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Niu is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 242K(measured from records)
- FIFinland1 in 93K
- SESweden1 in 167K
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)
- Sources
- 239 (measured from records)
- 1 in 93K (inferred from the name graph)
1,372 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A tall pole with yardarms from which hung ropes, circled by worshippers in the Pai Mārire religious movement.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 30 languages in the etymology graph.
How Niu is read(measured from records)
Niu is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.
- English36%
A tall pole with yardarms from which hung ropes, circled by worshippers in the Pai Mārire religious movement.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Chinese36%
nonstandard spelling of niū
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Niu 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 | 1,372 | 1 in 242K | 2.6K | Niu | 239 |
| ES Spain | 123 | 1 in 407K | 123 | — | 3 |
| SE Sweden | 61 | 1 in 167K | 61 | — | 7 |
| FI Finland | 60 | 1 in 93K | 60 | — | 2 |
| PL Poland | 41 | 1 in 934K | 22 | — | 1 |
| CH Switzerland | 31 | 1 in 271K | 31 | Niu | 5 |
| DK Denmark | 15 | 1 in 391K | 15 | — | — |
1,372 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; 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); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Niu is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
‘Girl’, Nuo °@ ‘Graceful’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Norwegian Nynorsk, alternative form of ni (“nine”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In aia, coconut
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In mnv, the coconut tree, Cocos nucifera; libations of fresh water or water squeezed from a banana stalk … and poured ceremonially from a coconut shell with ritual formulas, so as to cure sickness or cleanse a garden of evil gods
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
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)
- Emperor Wu of Hanb. 156not in their usual nameseventh emperor of the Han dynasty of China (157 BC–87 BC)
- Liu Shaoqib. 1898CNnot in their usual name2nd President of the People's Republic of China (1898–1969)
- Liu Xiaobob. 1955CNnot in their usual nameChinese literary critic, writer, professor, and human rights activist (1955–2017)
- Gordon Liub. 1955CNnot in their usual nameChinese martial arts film actor (born 1955)
- Andy Laub. 1961CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actor, film producer, and singer
- Lucy Liub. 1968USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (born 1968)
- Liu Yangb. 1978CNnot in their usual nameChinese astronaut
- Liu Yifeib. 1987CNnot in their usual nameChinese-American actress and singer (born 1987)
- Simu Liub. 1989CNnot in their usual nameChinese-Canadian actor and author (born 1989)
- Dallas Liub. 2001USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
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 26 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.6K | #11,513 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.4K | #19,646 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 776 | #28,856 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 123 | #23,852 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 123 | #23,693 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 61 | #10,767 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 60 | #19,459 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 31 | #26,702 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 22 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 22 | #85,215 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 19 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 19 | #93,129 |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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 Niu mean, and where does it come from?
- A tall pole with yardarms from which hung ropes, circled by worshippers in the Pai Mārire religious movement. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Niu have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.4 thousand people named Niu, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled niu.
- Where is Niu most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Niu is densest in Finland — about 1 in 93 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Niu?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,372 people named Niu in 2010, about 1 in 242 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Niu?
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/niuThe 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, “Niu”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.