Kū
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Kū is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Proto-Polynesian *tuqur (cognate with Maori tū and Tongan tuʻu), from Proto-Oceanic *tuqu (cognate with Fijian tū), from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *tuquD.
- USUnited States1 in 364K(measured from records)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 88Kas Kue
- FIFinland1 in 310K
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 Kū 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)
- Sources
- 333 (measured from records)
- 1 in 310K (inferred from the name graph)
915 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Kue in NG Nigeria, CM Cameroon, AG Antigua & Barbuda and Ku in US United States, MY Malaysia.
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)
- Proto-Polynesian*tuqurcognate with Maori tū and Tongan tuʻu(measured from records)
- Proto-Oceanic*tuqucognate with Fijian tū(measured from records)
- Proto-Malayo-Polynesian*tuquD(measured from records)
From Proto-Polynesian *tuqur (cognate with Maori tū and Tongan tuʻu), from Proto-Oceanic *tuqu (cognate with Fijian tū), from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *tuquD.
Sources 1
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kū 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 915 | 1 in 364K | 5.8K | Ku | 333 |
| MY Malaysia | ≈370 est. | ≈1 in 88K | — | Ku | 62 |
| CM Cameroon | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 175K | — | Kue | 9 |
| BR Brazil | 145as Kue | 1 in 1.5M | 145 | — | — |
| NG Nigeria | ≈85 est. | ≈1 in 2.5M | — | Kue | 15 |
| FI Finland | 18 | 1 in 310K | 43 | — | 3 |
| AG Antigua & Barbuda | ≈1 est. | ≈1 in 78K | — | Kue | 1 |
915 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kū mean, and where does it come from?
- From Proto-Polynesian *tuqur (cognate with Maori tū and Tongan tuʻu), from Proto-Oceanic *tuqu (cognate with Fijian tū), from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *tuquD. Recorded by Wiktionary.
- In which country does Kū have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 915 people named Kū, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ku.
- Where is Kū most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kū is densest in Finland — about 1 in 310 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Kū?
- In the United States, the national register counted 915 people named Kū in 2020, about 1 in 364 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kū?
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/k%C5%ABThe 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, “Kū”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.