Shù
surname · Latin script
Shù is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Hong Kong it is the 91st most common given name. Recorded meaning: Borrowed from Egyptian šw (“Shu”, literally “Emptiness”), a derivative of the verb šwj (“to be empty, devoid of”). Shù is also written 스후 in Korean (Hangul).
- TWTaiwan≈1 in 270(inferred from the name graph)
- CNChina≈1 in 1.2K
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 1.8K
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 Shù 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 296 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 265 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,200,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Taiwan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Shù in other scripts: Korean (Hangul)
(measured from records)Locally spelled Shu in US United States, MY Malaysia, TW Taiwan and 4 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)Borrowed from Egyptian šw (“Shu”, literally “Emptiness”), a derivative of the verb šwj (“to be empty, devoid of”).
Cited for this meaning 3
- A concise dictionary of first names
- Wiktionary
- Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Shù 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 | — | ≈1,200,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Shu | 139 |
| TW Taiwan | — | ≈89,000 est. | ≈1 in 265 | — | Shu | 129 |
| MY Malaysia | #208 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Shu | 76 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈7,400 est. | ≈1 in 38K | — | Shu | 71 |
| US United States | — | 4,272 | 1 in 78K | 3.2K | Shu | 296 |
| HK Hong Kong | #91 | ≈4,200 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Shu | 88 |
| SG Singapore | #291 | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 4.4K | — | Shu | 84 |
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. 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)- Shu Xingbeib. 1905CNChinese physicist (1905-1983)
- Shu ZonggengYuan dynasty person CBDB = 103602
- Shu QingSong dynasty person CBDB = 18275
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 Shù mean, and where does it come from?
- Borrowed from Egyptian šw (“Shu”, literally “Emptiness”), a derivative of the verb šwj (“to be empty, devoid of”). Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names and Wiktionary and 1 other source.
- Which countries have the most people named Shù?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.2 million people named Shù in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled shu. After it come Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia and United States; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Shù?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,272 people named Shù in 2020, about 1 in 78 thousand residents.
- How common is Shù compared with other names?
- In Hong Kong, Shù is the 91st most common given name of 23,276 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Shù?
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/sh%C3%B9The 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, “Shù” — the 91st most common given name in Hong Kong. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.