This article is about the name spelled Chu in the Revised Romanization of Korean. For the name spelled Chu in the McCune–Reischauer system, see Joo (Korean name).
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.[1] 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".[2]
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.[1]
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,[3] 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.[1]
People
People with the family name Chu or Choo include:
Alex Chu (born 1979), Korean-Canadian singer and actor
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:[4][5]
^ abc"행정구역(구시군)/성씨·본관별 가구 및 인구" [Family names by administrative region (district, city, county): separated by bon-gwan, households and individuals]. Korean Statistical Information Service. Retrieved 23 October 2015.
^성씨 로마자 표기 방안: 마련을 위한 토론회 [Plan for romanisation of family names: a preparatory discussion]. National Institute of the Korean Language. 25 June 2009. p. 67. Retrieved 22 October 2015.
^公安部统计：'王'成中国第一大姓 有9288万人 [Public Security Bureau Statistics: 'Wang' is China biggest family name, with 92.88 million people]. 24 April 2007. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 3 June 2016.
^인명용 한자표 [Table of hanja for use in personal names] (PDF). Seoul: Supreme Court of the Republic of Korea. Retrieved 3 June 2016.
This page lists people with the surnameChu. If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name(s) to the link.
