서
surname · Hangul script
Meaning: west
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/sʰʌ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
서 is a surname written in the Hangul script, with more bearers in South Korea than in any other country, where it is the 15th most common surname.
- KRSouth Korea1 in 69(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 47Kas Seo
- KPNorth Korea≈1 in 772as Seo
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 서 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.
- South Korea (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 289 (measured from records)
- 1 in 69 (inferred from the name graph)
752,233 people, 2015
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
South Korea
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Seo in US United States, CN China, SG Singapore and 1 more.
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)
west
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
서 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KR South Korea | #15 | 752,233 | 1 in 69 | 752K | 서 | 218 |
| KP North Korea | #115 | ≈33,000 est. | ≈1 in 772 | 7 | Seo | 26 |
| US United States | — | 7,033as Seo | 1 in 47K | 7.9K | Seo | 289 |
| CN China | — | ≈6,400 est. | ≈1 in 219K | — | Seo | 30 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 23K | 1 | 서 | 3 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈240 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Seo | 33 |
| LI Liechtenstein | — | ≈1 est. | ≈1 in 32K | 8 | — | — |
752,233 people counted by KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants, 2015. 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: KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Statistik Liechtenstein — Familiennamenstatistik (surnames). 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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 7 sources across 1 country.
Reference works 3
- KOSIS Korea 2015 census surnames + clans (bon'gwan)
- Wikipedia given-name 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 서 mean, and where does it come from?
- west Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce 서?
- A machine transcription gives /sʰʌ/ (IPA) for Korean.
- In which country does 서 have the most bearers?
- In South Korea, the national register counted about 752 thousand people named 서, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled 서.
- Where is 서 most common?
- 서 is densest in South Korea, where the national register counts about 1 in 69 people carrying it.
- How common is the name 서?
- In South Korea, the national register counted 752,233 people named 서 in 2015, about 1 in 69 residents.
- How common is 서 compared with other names?
- In South Korea, 서 is the 15th most common surname of 14,133 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about 서?
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/%EC%84%9CThe 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, “서” — the 15th most common surname in South Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.