Semu

surname · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

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

Semu is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • ETEthiopia≈1 in 392Kas ሰሙ(inferred from the name graph)
  • SESweden1 in 49Kas Simu
  • FIFinland1 in 72Kas Simu

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Semu itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

320 named Samu, 2010

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
17 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 49K (inferred from the name graph)

Sweden, as Simu

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

SemuLatin(measured from records)
ሰሙEthiopic(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled ሰሙ in ET Ethiopia.

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

No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.

Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Semu 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 Semu is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—320as Samu1 in 1M350Semu17
ET Ethiopia#927≈280 est.≈1 in 392K—ሰሙ10
SE Sweden—207as Simu1 in 49K207—1
BR Brazil—112as Samu1 in 1.9M112——
FI Finland—77as Simu1 in 72K6.4K—1
NO Norway—26as Samu1 in 210K26—1
BE Belgium—23as Samu1 in 510K23——

320 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling samu. 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: DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register). 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)

Semu is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Indonesian surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Malaysia, Malawi, United States

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Şemu, Şemü

  • Turkish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, Syria

    Also written Şemu, Sémü

  • Bangla surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Bangladesh, India

    Also written সেম, সেমু

39 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.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Semu is also recorded in 6 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In scn, first-person plural present indicative tense of èssiri; (we) are.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In English, A caste in China established under the Yuan Dynasty.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Japanese, Rōmaji transcription of セム

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Esperanto, imperative of semi

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In yrl, to leave; to exit

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Indonesian, apparent

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

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.

How to address them(machine-generated)

FormalDear Semu,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 11 sources across 7 countries.

Official registers attesting Semu
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—6#49,536
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)20081#201,106
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 1

  • Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)

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

How do you pronounce Semu?
A machine transcription gives /sɛmu/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Semu have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 320 people named Samu, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Semu most common?
No national register we hold counts the spelling Semu itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Sweden's: the national register counts about 1 in 49 thousand people named Simu.
How common is the name Semu?
In the United States, the national register counted 320 people named Samu in 2010, about 1 in 1.0 million residents.
How common is Semu compared with other names?
In Ethiopia, Semu is the 927th most common surname of 22,571 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Semu?

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/semu

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, “Semu” — the 927th most common surname in Ethiopia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Semu parses inside a full name →