Chö
given name · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Chö is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Korea than in any other country, where it is the 4th most common surname. Recorded meaning: From Korean 조(趙) (Jo) and 조(曺) (Jo).
- SGSingapore≈1 in 5.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- KRSouth Korea1 in 22as 최
- KPNorth Korea≈1 in 192as Choi
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 Chö 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)
- #171 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 479 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.2K (inferred from the name graph)
2,340,582 named 최, 2015
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Singapore, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Choi in US United States, CA Canada, HK Hong Kong and 1 more, 최 in KR South Korea, MO Macao, Cho in SG Singapore and Choe in KP North Korea.
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)
From Korean 조(趙) (Jo) and 조(曺) (Jo).
Sources 2
- 25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
- Wiktionary
Attested across 22 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Chö 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 | #4 | 2,340,582as 최 | 1 in 22 | 2.4M | 최 | 291 |
| CN China | — | ≈260,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.4K | — | Choi | 66 |
| KP North Korea | #8 | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 192 | 63 | Choe | 47 |
| US United States | #276 | 50,786as Choi | 1 in 6.5K | 55K | Choi | 479 |
| HK Hong Kong | #52 | ≈36,000 est. | ≈1 in 204 | — | Choi | 118 |
| CA Canada | #148 | ≈9,100 est. | ≈1 in 4.2K | 1 | Choi | 232 |
| MO Macao | #16 | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 335 | — | 최 | 21 |
| SG Singapore | #195 | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 5.2K | — | Cho | 100 |
2,340,582 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; KOSIS — 2015 census surnames; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Choi Yong-kunb. 1900KPNorth Korean vice-marshal and politician (1900－1976)
- Choi Hong-hib. 1918KPKorean army general and martial artist (1918–2002)
- Choi Kyu-hahb. 1919KR4th President of South Korea (1919–2006)
- Choe Ryong-haeb. 1950KPnot in their usual nameChairman of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly of North Korea
- Choi Min-sikb. 1962KRSouth Korean actor
- Kenneth Choib. 1971USAmerican actor
- T.O.Pb. 1987KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean rapper, singer, songwriter and actor (born 1987)
- Choi Woo-shikb. 1990KRCanadian actor
- Choi Min-hob. 1991KRSouth Korean rapper, singer and actor
- Sullib. 1994KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean singer and actress (1994-2019)
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
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Chö mean, and where does it come from?
- From Korean 조(趙) (Jo) and 조(曺) (Jo). Recorded by 25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado and Wiktionary.
- Is Chö a male or female name?
- Chö is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Chö have the most bearers?
- In South Korea, the national register counted about 2.3 million people named 최, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Chö?
- In South Korea, the national register counted 2,340,582 people named 최 in 2015, about 1 in 22 residents.
- How common is Chö compared with other names?
- In South Korea, Chö is the 4th most common surname of 14,133 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Chö?
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/ch%C3%B6The 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, “Chö” — the 4th most common surname in South Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.