Yü

Name: Yü: recorded bearers, distribution and rank
Creator: Mondonomo
Published: 2026-10-13
License: https://mondonomo.ai/tos#rights

surname · Latin script

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 2 countries

Yü is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Hong Kong it is the 59th most common surname. Recorded meaning: From English u, the English name of the letter U/u.

rarermore common

USUnited States1 in 6.4K(measured from records)
HKHong Kong≈1 in 571Kas Yuee
CNChina≈1 in 969Kas Yuee

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 Yü 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)
Record sources: 494 (measured from records)
: 1 in 6.4K (inferred from the name graph)

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Yu in US United States, CN China, HK Hong Kong and Yuee in ES Spain, AR Argentina.

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

From English u, the English name of the letter U/u.

Cited for this meaning 5

25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
Digital Pāḷi Dictionary
Wiktionary
Chinese Surnames Encyclopedia (Section 2)
Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)

Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

Yü 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 Yü is recorded, by country
Country					Most common spelling	Sources
US United States	#786	52,035	1 in 6.4K	66K	Yu	494
ES Spain	—	3,106	1 in 16K	3.1K	Yuee	52
CN China	#875	≈1,400 est.	≈1 in 969K	—	Yu	153
AR Argentina	—	1,314	1 in 35K	1.3K	Yuee	2
FI Finland	—	701	1 in 7.9K	701	—	18
SE Sweden	—	687	1 in 15K	687	Yü	38
NO Norway	—	404	1 in 14K	404	—	26
HK Hong Kong	#59	≈13 est.	≈1 in 571K	—	Yu	132

52,035 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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

Yü is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

Chinese surname8 spellings in the group
Most recorded in United States, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong
Also written Yu, Yú, Yù, Yū, Yu'
a separate name12 spellings in the group
Also written Yu, Yŭ, Yú, Yư, Yû
Spanish surname17 spellings in the group
Most recorded in United States, Philippines, Argentina, China
Languages: Spanish, Portuguese
Also written Yu, Yú, Yû, Ýü, Ÿü
Korean surname22 spellings in the group
Most recorded in South Korea, United States, Japan, Malaysia
Languages: Korean, Japanese
Also written 유, Yu, Yū, 유유, 여우
Turkish surname7 spellings in the group
Most recorded in Türkiye, China, United States, Hong Kong
Languages: Turkish, Azerbaijani
Also written Yu, Yuu, Yú, Yù, Ÿu
Burmese surname33 spellings in the group
Most recorded in Myanmar (Burma), United States, Malaysia, Singapore
Also written Yu, Ýû, Ýŭ, Yŭ, Ýu

13 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.

Notable people with this name

Yu Lanb. 1921CNChinese actress (1921-2020)
Ronny Yub. 1950CNHong Kong film director, producer and screenwriter
Yu Rongguangb. 1958CNChinese actor and film director
Paul Yub. 1970TWTaiwanese voice actor
Yu Zheng Changb. 1973TWTaiwanese voice actor
Yu Zhengb. 1978CNChinese screenwriter
Yu Yangb. 1986CNChinese badminton player, born 1986
Yu Dabaob. 1988CNChinese footballer
Yu Wenxiab. 1989CNChinese beauty queen
Kelly Yub. 1989CAChinese-Canadian singer and actress

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

3 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 2 countries.

Reference works 1

Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Yü mean, and where does it come from?: From English u, the English name of the letter U/u. Recorded by 25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado and Digital Pāḷi Dictionary and 3 other sources.
In which country does Yü have the most bearers?: In the United States, the national register counted about 52 thousand people named Yü, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled yu.
Where is Yü most common?: Yü is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 6.4 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Yü?: In the United States, the national register counted 52,035 people named Yü in 2010, about 1 in 6.4 thousand residents.
How common is Yü compared with other names?: In the United States, Yü is the 786th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Yü?

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/y%C3%BC

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 2026-10-13 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, “Yü” — the 786th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Yü parses inside a full name →