Where the name comes from
The main line descends from You Yu (由余), a senior officer (上大夫) at the court of Qin during the Spring and Autumn period; his descendants took either 由 or 余 as their surname. The clan's early ground was the corridor from Fengxiang (鳳翔) to Xianyang in Shaanxi. It later settled at She County in Anhui, became prominent in Xin'an prefecture, and moved further south as fighting pushed people out of the north. The character means "surplus".
The same name, spelled differently
A Chinese surname is a character, not a spelling. The Latin letters on a passport come from whichever dialect the name was written down from — so these are all 余.
- YuMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- Yu / YueCantonese — Hong Kong
- UCantonese — Macau
- YeeSze Yap (Taishanese); also used in Singapore
- Yee / Jee / EuMalaysia
- ÛHokkien (Pe̍h-ōe-jī)
- ErTeochew
- DưVietnamese
The character
Outside a name, 余 is an ordinary word meaning (archaic) I.
- Strokes
- 7
- Radical
- 人
- Traditional
- 餘
- As a word
- yú
Words built from 余
The character does ordinary work in the language too. Each of these is a real word you can look up.
Other surnames read “Yu”
Romanised the same way, but a different character and a different family.