Chu

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.