Xú

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Xú is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 69th most common surname. Recorded meaning: Borrowed from Vietnamese xu, from French sou. Doublet of sou.

rarermore common
  • CNChina≈1 in 195(inferred from the name graph)
  • HKHong Kong≈1 in 1.1K
  • SGSingapore≈1 in 1.7K

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 Xú 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)

≈7,200,000 people, est.

4 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
440 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 195 (inferred from the name graph)

China, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

HoaLatin(measured from records)
СюйCyrillic(measured from records)
ჰუGeorgian(measured from records)
ΞουGreek(measured from records)

4 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Xu in US United States, CN China, SG Singapore and 2 more, Hoa in VN Vietnam and Hu in ID Indonesia.

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)

Derivation of Xú: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Xú
  1. Vietnamesexu(measured from records)
  2. Frenchsou(measured from records)

Borrowed from Vietnamese xu, from French sou. Doublet of sou.

Sources 3

  • Wiktionary
  • Chinese Surnames Encyclopedia (Section 2)
  • Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)

Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Xú 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.

Where Xú is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China#315≈7,200,000 est.≈1 in 195—Xu237
VN Vietnam#79≈160,000 est.≈1 in 622listedHoa217
TW Taiwan#284≈71,000 est.≈1 in 334—Xu102
US United States#77825,6221 in 13K44KXu440
ID Indonesia—≈17,000 est.≈1 in 16KlistedHu83
HK Hong Kong#82≈6,800 est.≈1 in 1.1K—Xu97
SG Singapore#69≈3,600 est.≈1 in 1.7K—Xu119

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 — Surname Frequency 2010; 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).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Xú is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate surname19 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in China, United States, Hong Kong, United Kingdom

    Also written Xu, Xü, Xù, Xữ, X̶̷̲̲̿u̶̷̲̲̿

3 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Xú is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Chinese, Hanyu Pinyin reading of 佖

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

1400160018002000Xu Guangqi, b. 1562Xu Shichang, b. 1855Frank Shu, b. 1943Xu Genbao, b. 1944Norman Chui, b. 1950Tsui Hark, b. 1951Xu Jinglei, b. 1974Vivian Hsu, b. 1975Barbie Hsu, b. 1976Dee Hsu, b. 1978
  • Xu Guangqib. 1562CNlate-Ming-dynasty Chinese politician, Scholar, Lay Catholic leader and Servant of God (*1562 – †1633)
  • Xu Shichangb. 1855CNPresident of the Republic of China (1855–1939)
  • Frank Shub. 1943USnot in their usual nameAmerican astronomer (1943–2023)
  • Xu Genbaob. 1944CNChinese football manager (1944-)
  • Norman Chuib. 1950CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actor (1950-2024)
  • Tsui Harkb. 1951VNnot in their usual nameHong Kong film director, screenwriter and producer
  • Xu Jingleib. 1974CNChinese actress and film director
  • Vivian Hsub. 1975TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese actress and singer
  • Barbie Hsub. 1976TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese actress, singer and television presenter (1976–2025)
  • Dee Hsub. 1978TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese host, actress, and singer

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

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Xú under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Xú mean, and where does it come from?
Borrowed from Vietnamese xu, from French sou. Doublet of sou. Recorded by Wiktionary and Chinese Surnames Encyclopedia (Section 2) and 1 other source.
In which country does Xú have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 7.2 million people named Xú in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled xu.
How common is the name Xú?
In the United States, the national register counted 25,622 people named Xú in 2010, about 1 in 13 thousand residents.
How common is Xú compared with other names?
In China, Xú is the 315th most common surname of 142,871 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Xú?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/x%C3%BA

The 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, “Xú” — the 315th most common surname in China. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Xú parses inside a full name →