Chao

11,067 people in the United States were counted with the surname Chao in the 2020 census, making it the 3,183rd most common in the country. That is about one person in 27,000.

By the numbers

People: 11,067
Rank: 3,183rd
How common: 1 in 27,000
Per 100,000: 3.7

Where the name comes from

Origin Chinese

From cmn, cmn-wadegiles romanization: Chao⁴.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Chao described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 86.9%
Hispanic or Latino 5.7%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.7%
White, not Hispanic 3.4%
Black, not Hispanic 0.2%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.09%

Notable people called Chao

Manu Chao (born 1961)Spanish musician
Elaine Chao (born 1953)18th United States Secretary of Transportation and 24th United States Secretary of Labor
Ban Chao (32–102)Chinese military general, explorer and diplomat (32–102 CE)
Rosalind Chao (born 1957)American actress
Huang Chao (801–884)Chinese emperor
Ma Chao (176–222)Chinese military general and warlord
Li Chao (born 1989)Chinese chess player
Deng Chao (born 1979)Chinese actor

People named Chao with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Chao

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.