Chu (Korean name)


Chu, also spelled Choo, is a Korean family name and an element in Korean given names. Its meaning depends on the hanja used to write it.

Family name

Overview

The 2000 South Korean Census found 55,309 people with the family name Chu. It could be written with either of two hanja, indicating different lineages. A study by the National Institute of the Korean Language based on year 2007 application data for South Korean passports found that 55.1% of applicants with this surname chose to spell it in Latin letters as "Chu" in their passports, while 43.1% spelled it as "Choo".

Hanja meaning "autumn" (秋)

This character was originally used to write the Chinese family name now pronounced Qῑu in Mandarin. According to the 2000 Census, 54,667 people in 17,142 households had this family name, making it the 64th-most common family name out of 287 family names distinguished by the census.

Hanja meaning "State of Zou" (鄒)

This character was originally used to write the Chinese family name now pronounced Zōu in Mandarin, and before that the name of the historical State of Zou. Though Zōu is a fairly widespread family name in China, where a 2007 survey found it to be the country's 67th-most common family name, the same character is very rarely used as a Korean family name; the 2000 South Korean census found only 642 people in 209 households who used this character to write their family name, making it the country's 190th-most common family name. None of them reported their bon-gwan.

People

People with the Korean family name Chu include:
There are 23 hanja with the reading "Chu", and a variant form of one of those, on the South Korean government's official list of hanja which may be registered for use in given names; they are:
  1. : "autumn"
  2. : "to chase"
  3. : "to push"
  4. : "to pluck"
  5. : "ugly"
  6. : "Juglans mandshurica tree"
  7. : "hinge"
  8. : "State of Zou"
  9. : "awl"
  10. : "a weight"
  11. : "to fall"
  12. : "backbone"
  14. : "wrinkle"
  15. : "fodder"
  16. : "mugwort"
  17. : "to ask"
  18. : "to run"
  19. : "boss"
  20. : "metal bar"
  21. : "chick'
  22. : "groom"
  23. : "loach"
  24. *