Tjoe

surname · Latin script

Meaning: obsolete spelling of Chu, a Chinese Indonesian surname of Hokkien or Hakka origin

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

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

Tjoe is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Indonesia than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • IDIndonesia≈1 in 49K(inferred from the name graph)
  • SGSingapore≈1 in 257K
  • MYMalaysia≈1 in 530K

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.

Indonesia (inferred from the name graph)

≈5,400 people, est.

Sources
92 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 49K (inferred from the name graph)

Indonesia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

obsolete spelling of Chu, a Chinese Indonesian surname of Hokkien or Hakka origin

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Where in the world(measured from records)

Tjoe 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 Tjoe is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ID Indonesia≈5,400 est.≈1 in 49KlistedTjoe92
US United States≈100 est.≈1 in 3.3MlistedTjoe56
MY Malaysia≈62 est.≈1 in 530K—Tjoe8
SG Singapore≈24 est.≈1 in 257K—Tjoe12
NL Netherlands211 in 823K21Tjoe25
BE Belgium51 in 2.3M5——

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: the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); 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)

Tjoe is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Australia, Netherlands, Malaysia

    Languages: English, Dutch, German

    Also written T-Joe

23 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)

Tjoe is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In omq-sjq, The vine of a squash plant

    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)

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)

FormalYth. Bapak/Ibu Tjoe,Dear Tjoe, (English)
InformalHalo Tjoe,Hi Tjoe, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 10 sources across 5 countries.

Official registers attesting Tjoe
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)200721#48,912
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)20085#106,656
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (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 Tjoe mean, and where does it come from?
obsolete spelling of Chu, a Chinese Indonesian surname of Hokkien or Hakka origin Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Tjoe?
A machine transcription gives /t͡ʃˈu/ (IPA) for Indonesian.
In which country does Tjoe have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 5.4 thousand people named Tjoe in Indonesia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tjoe.
How common is the name Tjoe?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted 21 people named Tjoe in 2007, about 1 in 823 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Tjoe?

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/tjoe

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, “Tjoe”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Tjoe parses inside a full name →