Yeo
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person who lives by a stream, from southwestern Middle English yo ‘stream, river’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Yeo is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 21st most common surname.
- SGSingapore≈1 in 478(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 1.4K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 11K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 335 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 478 (inferred from the name graph)
≈31,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Singapore, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
person who lives by a stream, from southwestern Middle English yo ‘stream, river’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Yeo 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 45K | — | Yeo | 23 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | #965 | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 941 | 50K | Yeo | 25 |
| MY Malaysia | #305 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Yeo | 119 |
| SG Singapore | #21 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 478 | — | Yeo | 188 |
| KP North Korea | — | ≈4,200 est. | ≈1 in 6.1K | 3 | — | — |
| US United States | — | 2,805 | 1 in 119K | 3.2K | Yeo | 335 |
| AU Australia | #985 | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Yeo | 180 |
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: nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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)
Yeo 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 English, name for someone who lived near a stream, from OE ea stream, river (cf. Nye, Rye i, and Tye i), which became ya or yo in the ME dials, of Somerset and Devon, and gave rise to several river names and minor placenames in this Yestifeev see Yevtikhiev Yetman see Yate Yeuell see Yule
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
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 Wen of Suib. 541CNnot in their usual namefounding emperor of the Sui Dynasty (541-604)
- Chen Ning Yangb. 1922CNnot in their usual nameChinese physicist (1922–2025)
- Edward Yangb. 1947TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese film director and screenwriter (1947-2007)
- Michelle Yeohb. 1962MYnot in their usual nameMalaysian actress (born 1962)
- Yang Liweib. 1965CNnot in their usual nameChinese astronaut
- Charlie Yeungb. 1974CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actress
- Miriam Yeungb. 1974CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong singer and actress
- Bowen Yangb. 1990USnot in their usual nameChinese-American comedian
- Yang Yangb. 1991CNnot in their usual nameChinese actor
- Yang Zib. 1992CNnot in their usual nameChinese actress
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 27 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies | — | 50K | #17 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.2K | #9,730 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.8K | #11,272 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.2K | #12,858 |
| KP North Korea | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 3 | #49 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (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 Yeo mean, and where does it come from?
- person who lives by a stream, from southwestern Middle English yo ‘stream, river’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Yeo have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 31 thousand people named Yeo in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled yeo.
- How common is the name Yeo?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,805 people named Yeo in 2010, about 1 in 119 thousand residents.
- How common is Yeo compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Yeo is the 21st most common surname of 78,292 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Yeo?
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/yeoThe 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, “Yeo” — the 21st most common surname in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.