Heo 허 — Korean last name
Is Heo a Korean last name?
Yes. Heo (Hangul: 허, Hanja: 許) is a Korean family name recorded in the 2015 South Korean census with 326,782 holders, making it the #28 most common of the 191 surnames counted. Roughly one in every 152 South Koreans is a Heo. It is a well-established name you will meet regularly in Korea and in Korean communities abroad.
How to write Heo in Korean
In Hangul, Heo is written 허. Its Hanja (Chinese character) is 許. Unlike many Korean surnames, Heo has a single Hanja form, so every Heo in Korea shares the same character.
What does Heo mean?
The character 許 means to permit, to allow. As with most Korean surnames, the meaning comes from the Chinese character rather than from the Korean sound, so it says something about how the name was first written down (often a place, a virtue, an object or a Chinese dynasty) rather than describing the family. Koreans rarely think about the literal meaning of a surname in daily life, but it matters for genealogy and for choosing given names that pair well with it.
Major Heo clans (bon-gwan)
Korean surnames are subdivided by bon-gwan — the ancestral hometown of the clan founder. Two people named Heo from different bon-gwan are considered unrelated. The best-known Heo clans are: Yangcheon Heo, Gimhae Heo. The place name comes first (for example "Gimhae Kim" means the Kim clan whose founder settled in Gimhae).
How common is Heo?
Heo is common Korean surname. Just above it in the rankings is Baek (382,447) and just below it is Noh (315,372). For comparison, Kim, the most common surname, has 10,689,967 holders. All figures come from Statistics Korea's 2015 Population and Housing Census, which only counts surnames held by five or more people.
Spellings and romanization
Heo is the spelling most Korean families use on passports and in English. The official Revised Romanization (used by the South Korean government since 2000) is Heo, and the older McCune–Reischauer system gives Hŏ. Other spellings you will see in real life include Hur, Huh, Her, Hu, Ho. The variety exists because Korean passport rules let each family choose its own romanization, so spellings drifted over generations of emigration; in Korean, every one of these is the same 허.
How to pronounce Heo
Heo is pronounced "huh" (허) — Hur and Huh are attempts at the same sound.
Is Heo Chinese or Korean?
Both, in a sense — the character is shared, the family is not. Korean surnames were written with Chinese characters for over a thousand years, so nearly every Korean surname has a Chinese (and Vietnamese) reading: 許 is Xǔ in Mandarin and Hứa in Vietnamese. A Korean Heo and a Chinese family with the same character are not related; they simply adopted the same character at different times and places. If someone spells their name "Heo" they are almost certainly Korean, because the Chinese and Vietnamese romanizations look different. See our full guide to Korean vs Chinese last names.
Related Korean surnames
Frequently asked questions about Heo
Is Heo a Korean or Chinese last name?
Heo as spelled is Korean (허). The Hanja 許 is also used as a surname in China and Vietnam, but with different romanizations (Xǔ in Mandarin, Hứa in Vietnamese). The families are not related.
How many people have the last name Heo?
326,782 people in South Korea had the surname Heo (허) in the 2015 census, or 0.66% of the population. That makes it the #28 most common Korean surname.
How do you write Heo in Korean?
Heo is written 허 in Hangul. In Hanja it is 許.
What does the Korean last name Heo mean?
The Hanja 許 means "to permit, to allow". Korean surname meanings come from the Chinese character the name is written with, not from the Korean sound.
Source: Statistics Korea (KOSIS), 2015 Population and Housing Census, surnames by Hangul with five or more holders (total population 49,705,663). Hanja meanings from standard Hanja dictionaries. Check another surname.