Shao
surname · Latin script
Meaning: nonstandard spelling of shāo
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ʃaw/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Shao is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 89K(measured from records)
- FIFinland1 in 55K
- NONorway1 in 72K
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
- 295 (measured from records)
- 1 in 55K (inferred from the name graph)
3,741 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
nonstandard spelling of shāo
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Shao 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.
3,741 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); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Shao 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 Filipino, a surname from Hokkien
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In och, Be few, little, junior
as a wordSchuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)
In och, Young, junior
as a wordSchuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)
In och, Little, few
as a wordSchuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)
In och, To burn
as a wordSchuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)
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)
- Shao Yongb. 1011CNChinese philosopher, mathematician, and scholar under the Song dynasty (1011-1077)
- Shao Piaopingb. 1884CNQing dynasty journalists
- Shao Yuanchongb. 1890CNRepublic of China person CBDB = 82285
- 邵逸夫b. 1907CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong entertainment mogul and philanthropist (1907-2014)
- Maggie Shiub. 1965CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actress
- Shao Bingb. 1968CNChinese actor
- Shao Jiayib. 1980CNChinese footballer
- Ivy Shaob. 1989TWTaiwanese actress
- Shao Tingb. 1989CNChinese basketball player (born 1989)
- Shao Qib. 2001CNChinese freestyle skier
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)
Attested in 45 sources across 25 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 5.9K | #5,641 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.7K | #8,765 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.9K | #14,201 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 498 | #8,023 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 498 | #8,007 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 414 | #10,616 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 101 | #12,696 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 99 | #7,283 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 76 | #19,462 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 41 | #6,880 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- 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 Shao mean, and where does it come from?
- nonstandard spelling of shāo Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Shao?
- A machine transcription gives /ʃaw/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Shao have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 3.7 thousand people named Shao, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled shao.
- Where is Shao most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Shao is densest in Finland — about 1 in 55 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Shao?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,741 people named Shao in 2010, about 1 in 89 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Shao?
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/shaoThe 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, “Shao”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.