Vu
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Vietnamese: to slander, to libel (kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations))
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 22 countries · latest register: SSB PxWebApi, 2025
Vu is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Vietnam than in any other country, where it is the 6th most common surname.
- VNVietnam≈1 in 93(inferred from the name graph)
- NONorway1 in 3.8K
- FIFinland1 in 6.3K
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.
- Vietnam (inferred from the name graph)
- #597 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 443 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 93 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,100,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames, spellings grouped
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Vietnam, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Vũ in MO Macao.
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)Initialism of volume unit.
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
How Vu is read
(measured from records)Vu is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Vietnamese73%
to slander, to libel
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English17%
Initialism of volume unit.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where the surname Vu is found
(measured from records)Vu 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VN Vietnam | #6 | ≈1,100,000 est. | ≈1 in 93 | 4 | Vu | 259 |
| US United States | — | 36,179 | 1 in 9.2K | 44K | Vu | 443 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈5,700 est. | ≈1 in 49K | — | Vu | 42 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈4,800 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Vu | 131 |
| AU Australia | #454 | ≈3,900 est. | ≈1 in 7K | 4 | Vu | 220 |
| NO Norway | — | 1,456 | 1 in 3.8K | 1.5K | Vu | 34 |
| MO Macao | #236 | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 588 | — | Vũ | 7 |
| FI Finland | — | 887 | 1 in 6.3K | 887 | — | 18 |
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: This page is a comprehensive guide to Vietnamese last names published by Vietnam Teaching Jobs, offering insights into t; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); 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).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Vu is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Japanese, The hiragana syllable ゔ (vu) or the katakana syllable ヴ (vu) in Hepburn romanization.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code for Vanuatu since 1980.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Italian, The name of the Latin-script letter V/v.; vee
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, initialism of Versäumnisurteil
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)- Plaek Phibunsongkhramb. 1897THnot in their usual namePrime Minister of Thailand, 1938–44 and 1948–57 (1897–1964)
- Goh Chok Tongb. 1941SGnot in their usual name2nd Prime Minister of Singapore from 1990 to 2004
- Kris Wub. 1990CNnot in their usual nameChinese-born Canadian rapper and convicted sex criminal (1990–)
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).
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)49 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 22 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Vu come from?
- Initialism of volume unit. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What does the name Vu mean?
- In Vietnamese, to slander, to libel
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Vu?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.1 million people named Vu in Vietnam, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled vu. After it come United States, Indonesia, United Kingdom and Australia; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Vu?
- In the United States, the national register counted 36,179 people named Vu in 2010, about 1 in 9.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Vu compared with other names?
- In Vietnam, Vu is the 6th most common surname of 62,915 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Vu?
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/vuThe 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, “Vu” — ranked 7th in Vietnam (This page is a comprehensive guide to Vietnamese last names published by Vietnam Teaching Jobs, offering insights into t). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.