Gu
顾 · traditionally 顧 — Gù
The 88th most common surname in China
About 2.72 million people in mainland China, 0.20% of the population, most numerous in Jiangsu (Yuan Yida 袁义达 and Qiu Jiaru 邱家儒, 中国四百大姓, 2013).
Where the name comes from
Two unrelated lines share the character. The northern one descends from the Xia-dynasty statelet of Gu, whose ruler held the title Gu Bo (顧伯); Tang of Shang destroyed it and the survivors took the name of their lost country. The southern and much larger line runs from Goujian, King of Yue: his thirteenth-generation descendant Yao was made King of Donghai under the Han for helping defeat Xiang Yu, and enfeoffed his second son as Marquis of Guyu (顧餘侯) at Kuaiji — modern Shaoxing in Zhejiang — whose branch became the Gu of the lower Yangtze.
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 顾.
- GuMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- Koo / KuCantonese — Hong Kong and Macau
- KohMin Nan — Malaysia and Singapore
- CốVietnamese
The character
Outside a name, 顾 is an ordinary word meaning to look after.
- Strokes
- 10
- Radical
- 页
- Traditional
- 顧
- As a word
- gù
Words built from 顾
The character does ordinary work in the language too. Each of these is a real word you can look up.