Chu

At the 2020 census, 29,872 Americans bore the surname Chu — 1,154th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 10,000.

By the numbers

People: 29,872
Rank: 1,154th
How common: 1 in 10,000
Per 100,000: 10.0

Where the name comes from

Origin Mandarin

Typically, the cmn-wadegiles romanization of the common cmn ^朱 Wade-Giles romanization: Chu¹.

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

Who bears the name

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

Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 90.6%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.1%
White, not Hispanic 2.9%
Hispanic or Latino 1.9%
Black, not Hispanic 0.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.02%

Notable people called Chu

Steven Chu (born 1948)American physicist, former United States Secretary of Energy, Nobel laureate
Jon M. Chu (born 1979)American filmmaker
Eric Chu (born 1961)Politician and former Vice Premier of Taiwan
Judy Chu (born 1953)U.S. Representative from California
Chu Suiliang (597–659)Chinese chancellor
Chen Chu (born 1950)Taiwanese politician
Athena Chu (born 1971)Hong Kong actress
Ken Chu (born 1979)Taiwanese actor

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

Surnames like Chu

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.