Where the name comes from
The surname comes from the State of Su. During the Xia dynasty the rulers of Kunwu were given Yousu (有蘇), in what is now Henan, as a fief and established it as the State of Su; the state perished late in the Shang, and its rulers and people took the state's name as their clan name and moved elsewhere. Under King Wu of Zhou, Su Chasheng, Minister of Justice, revived the old Su region as his fief with a new capital at Wen — modern Wen County, Henan.
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 苏.
- SuMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- SoCantonese
- SouCantonese
- SohSouthern Min
- SouwSouthern Min
- ThuGan
- TôVietnamese
- SoKorean (소)
The character
Outside a name, 苏 is an ordinary word meaning to revive.
- Strokes
- 7
- Radical
- 艹
- Traditional
- 囌
- As a word
- sū
Words built from 苏
The character does ordinary work in the language too. Each of these is a real word you can look up.