Чу

surname · Cyrillic script

Meaning: listen!; be quiet! (interjection used to draw someone's attention to a sound or make someone listen to something)

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

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

rarermore common
  • KGKyrgyzstan≈1 in 581K(inferred from the name graph)
  • GYGuyana1 in 8Kas Chu
  • USUnited States1 in 12Kas Chu

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 Чу 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)

28,508 named Chu, 2010

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
82 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 581K (inferred from the name graph)

Kyrgyzstan, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

ЧуCyrillic(measured from records)
ChuLatin(measured from records)

Locally spelled Chu in US United States.

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)

listen!; be quiet! (interjection used to draw someone's attention to a sound or make someone listen to something)

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 24 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Чу 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 Чу is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States28,508as Chu1 in 12K30KChu37
ES Spain343as Chu1 in 146K343—1
SE Sweden302as Chu1 in 34K302—3
NL Netherlands271as Chu1 in 64K271—2
PL Poland242as Chu1 in 158K150——
FI Finland201as Chu1 in 28K201—1
NO Norway156as Chu1 in 35K156——
GY Guyana94as Chu1 in 8K94——
KG Kyrgyzstan≈10 est.≈1 in 581K—Чу7

28,508 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); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Чу is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Uzbek surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan

    Also written Чў

  • Kazakh surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Kazakhstan

    Also written Чў

  • Mongolian surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Mongolia

    Also written Chu, Чү

  • Croatian surname30 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, China, Hong Kong, Bulgaria

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovenian

    Also written Chu, Tsu, Ču, Chư, Çǖ

1 further group 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)

Чу 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 Bulgarian, second-person singular aorist indicative of чу́я (čúja)

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

  • In Macedonian, second/third-person singular aorist of чуе (čue)

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

  • In gld, vinegar

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

  • In av, horse

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

  • In atv, what

    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)

19201940196019802000Ju Jeung-ryu, b. 1926Joo Hyun, b. 1941Frances Yao, b. 1950Joo Jin-mo, b. 1958Joo Jin-mo, b. 1974Toby Chu, b. 1977Joo Sang-wook, b. 1978Jon M. Chu, b. 1979Ju Ji-hoon, b. 1982Joo Woo-jae, b. 1986
  • Ju Jeung-ryub. 1926KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actress (1926-1980)
  • Joo Hyunb. 1941KRnot in their usual nameactor
  • Frances Yaob. 1950USnot in their usual nameChinese-born American computer scientist
  • Joo Jin-mob. 1958KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actor (born 1958)
  • Joo Jin-mob. 1974KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actor born 1974
  • Toby Chub. 1977USAmerican composer (1977-)
  • Joo Sang-wookb. 1978KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actor
  • Jon M. Chub. 1979USAmerican filmmaker
  • Ju Ji-hoonb. 1982KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actor
  • Joo Woo-jaeb. 1986KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean model, Actor

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)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Чу under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Чу mean, and where does it come from?
listen!; be quiet! (interjection used to draw someone's attention to a sound or make someone listen to something) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Чу have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 29 thousand people named Chu, more than in any other country we hold.
How common is the name Чу?
In the United States, the national register counted 28,508 people named Chu in 2010, about 1 in 12 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Чу?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/%D1%87%D1%83

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, “Чу”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Чу parses inside a full name →