Nhu

given name · Vietnamese · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Nhu is a given name, most frequently recorded in Vietnam, where it is the 47th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Vietnamese and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: soft; gentle.

rarermore common
  • VNVietnam1 in 263
  • USUnited States1 in 109K
  • AOAngola1 in 48K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈3.4K

across 8 countries

Sources
165

185K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 55K

Sweden

Spellings & scripts

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin

soft; gentle

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Where in the world

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Nhu is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
VN Vietnam#47325,185171K rec.listedNhu165
US United States3,04313K rec.1 in 109K3KNhu119
GB United Kingdom605657 rec.Nhu18
CA Canada352402 rec.5Nhu36
SE Sweden1847 rec.1 in 55K1844
MY Malaysia109162 rec.Nhu7
SG Singapore102162 rec.Nhu9
FI Finland899 rec.1 in 63K2596
NL Netherlands6736 rec.1 in 258K6710
RU Russia6074 rec.Nhu8
AO Angola4748 rec.Nhu4
NO Norway3538 rec.100Nhu5

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages

  • Vietnamese222K84%
  • English18K7%
  • 7.4K3%
  • Spanish2.6K1%
  • French1.5K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Vietnamese222,26984%
English18,2907%
7,3583%
Spanish2,5661%
French1,4771%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way

Nhu is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate given name76K records spelled Nhu22 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Malaysia, United Kingdom, China

    Also written Như, Ňhư, Nhứ, Nhù, Nhû

  • English given name23K records spelled Nhu16 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Australia, United Kingdom, Germany

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Như, Nhữ, Nhủ, Nhự, Nhụ

  • a separate given name8.2K records spelled Nhu6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Angola, Canada

    Also written Như, Nhữ, Nhứ, Nhủ, Nhự

  • Spanish given name3.5K records spelled Nhu8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, El Salvador, Chile, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Như, Nhủ, Nhữ, Nhự

  • French given name2.2K records spelled Nhu8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Canada, United Kingdom

    Also written Như, Nhû, Nhữ, Nhü, Nhù

  • Finnish given name978 records spelled Nhu6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland

    Also written Ñhữ, Như, Ñhư

  • Czech given name525 records spelled Nhu4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Czechia, Slovakia

    Languages: Czech, Slovak

    Also written Như

44 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses

Nhu is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • Nacida del mar

    as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado

  • ISO 639-3 language code for Noone.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Welsh, nasal mutation of tu

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Over time

051015201980199020002010202019 · 2004

Show as table
Nhu in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1980–2020
Yearrecords
19808
198115
198215
19839
198412
19858
19865
198710
19888
19897
199012
199114
199211
199316
199412
199511
199613
199714
19989
199911
200015
200112
200211
20037
200419
20055
20067
20075
200814
200910
20106
20128
20137
20148
20157
20165
20206

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)37 years between 1980–2020. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name

190019502000Nguyễn Phúc Như Mai, b. 1905Nguyễn Phúc Như Lý, b. 1908Nhu Quynh, b. 1970Mother Mushroom, b. 1979Nguyễn Thị Như Hoa, b. 1984Trịnh Thị Bích Như, b. 1985Khả Như, b. 1987Bùi Thị Như, b. 1990Huỳnh Như, b. 1991Tiêu Châu Như Quỳnh, b. 1992

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence

Attested in 31 sources across 15 countries.

Official registers attesting Nhu
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20203K#5,208
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020296#5,208
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)259#3,012
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)184#5,543
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020180#105,671
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010112#147,253
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)100#7,758
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)89
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)67#7,069
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)46#8,615
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)31#3,633
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)202029

Reference works 2

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 129 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Nhu?
We estimate roughly 3.4 thousand people bear Nhu (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
In which country does Nhu have the most bearers?
Nhu is most frequently recorded in Vietnam, where it is most often spelled nhu.
How common is Nhu compared with other names?
In Vietnam, Nhu is the 47th most common given name of 72,115 given names recorded there.
Is Nhu a male or female name?
Nhu is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Nhu mean?
Recorded meaning: soft; gentle
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/nhu

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Nhu” — the 47th most common given name in Vietnam. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Nhu parses inside a full name →