Thu
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Abbreviation of Thursday
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/tʰu˨˨/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Thu is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Vietnam than in any other country, where it is the 9th most common given name.
- VNVietnam≈1 in 117(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 30K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 31K
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 Thu 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.
- Vietnam (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 230 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 117 (inferred from the name graph)
≈840,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Vietnam, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
Abbreviation of Thursday.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
How Thu is read(measured from records)
Thu 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.
- Vietnamese80%
Hán-Việt; tên của tiện nội trong ví dụ ghép Huy + Thu.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
Autumn
as a nameVietnamese Personal Names (CIA Foreign Names Studies, ch. 37)
- English8.1%
Abbreviation of Thursday.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Thu 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 | #9 | ≈840,000 est. | ≈1 in 117 | listed | Thu | 230 |
| US United States | — | 11,151 | 1 in 30K | 14K | Thu | 173 |
| AO Angola | #552 | ≈8,200 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | — | Thu | 3 |
| PE Peru | — | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Thu | 7 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 31K | 41 | Thu | 36 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈570 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Thu | 21 |
| GY Guyana | — | 175as La | 1 in 4.3K | 175 | — | — |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Thu is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In enm, alternative form of þou (“thou”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Scottish Gaelic, second-person singular informal pronoun; thou, you
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, singular imperative of thun
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Thu Tranb. 1901USAmerican actress
- Lê Văn Thụb. 1908VNVietnamese judge
- Ngô Viết Thụb. 1927VNVietnamese architect (1927-2000)
- Thu Kamkasomphoub. 1968FRFrench para table tennis player
- Nguyễn Thu Thủyb. 1971VNVietnamese artist
- Thu Phươngb. 1972VNVietnamese singer (born 1972)
- Lê Thị Thu Hằngb. 1972VNVietnamese diplomat
- Mai Thu Huyềnb. 1979VNVietnamese actress, model, businesswoman, television presenter and filmmaker
- Thu Trangb. 1984VNVietnamese actress and film producer
- Suni Hạ Linhb. 1990VNnot in their usual nameVietnamese singer
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 39 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1K | #25,066 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 564 | #39,052 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 287 | #64,750 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 41 | #57,456 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Thu mean, and where does it come from?
- Abbreviation of Thursday. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Thu?
- A machine transcription gives /tʰu˨˨/ (IPA) for Vietnamese.
- Is Thu a male or female name?
- Thu is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Thu have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 844 thousand people named Thu in Vietnam, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled thu.
- How common is the name Thu?
- In the United States, the national register counted 11,151 people named Thu in 2020, about 1 in 30 thousand residents.
- How common is Thu compared with other names?
- In Vietnam, Thu is the 9th most common given name of 73,918 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Thu?
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/thuThe 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, “Thu” — the 9th most common given name in Vietnam. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.