Shù
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
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”).
- TWTaiwan≈1 in 391(inferred from the name graph)
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 1.9K
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 2K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 296 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 391 (inferred from the name graph)
≈300,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Taiwan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Shu in US United States, MY Malaysia, TW Taiwan and 5 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”).
Sources 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 | — | ≈300,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.6K | — | Shu | 139 |
| TW Taiwan | — | ≈60,000 est. | ≈1 in 391 | — | Shu | 129 |
| MY Malaysia | #208 | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Shu | 76 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Shu | 71 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈4,800 est. | ≈1 in 45K | — | Shu | 23 |
| US United States | — | 4,272 | 1 in 78K | 3.2K | Shu | 296 |
| HK Hong Kong | #91 | ≈3,900 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Shu | 88 |
| SG Singapore | #291 | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 4.1K | — | 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 Duanqingb. 1038Song dynasty person (CBDB = 18279)
- Shu Xingbeib. 1905CNChinese physicist (1905-1983)
- Shu ZonggengYuan dynasty person CBDB = 103602
- Shu QingSong dynasty person CBDB = 18275
- Shu YongSong dynasty person CBDB = 18276
- Shu ZhuangSong dynasty person (CBDB = 18277)
- Shu ZhengqingSong dynasty person CBDB = 18278
- Shu DeruSong dynasty person CBDB = 18280
- Shu BinqingSong dynasty person (CBDB = 18281)
- Shu ChangruSong dynasty person CBDB = 18282
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.
- In which country does Shù have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 301 thousand people named Shù in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled shu.
- 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 2026-10-10.