Joo (Korean name)


Joo, also spelled Ju or Chu, is a Korean family name and an element in Korean given names. Its meaning differs based on the hanja used to write it.

Family name

As a family name, Joo may be written with either of two hanja, one meaning "red", and the other meaning "around". The former has one bon-gwan, while the latter has four. The 2000 South Korean census found 215,010 people with this family name.
In a study by the National Institute of the Korean Language based on 2007 application data for South Korean passports, it was found that 50.6% of people with this surname spelled it in Latin letters as Ju in their passports, and another 46.9% spelled it as Joo. Rarer alternative spellings included Chu and Choo.
People with these family names include:
There are 56 hanja with the reading "joo" on the South Korean government's official list of hanja which may be used in given names; they are listed in the table at right. One name containing this syllable, Eun-ju, was the sixth-most popular name for newborn South Korean girls in 1970.
Names beginning with this syllable include:
Names ending with this syllable include:
People with the single syllable given name Joo include: