Sunwoo 선우 — Korean last name
Is Sunwoo a Korean last name?
Yes. Sunwoo (Hangul: 선우, Hanja: 鮮于) is a Korean family name recorded in the 2015 South Korean census with 3,648 holders, making it the #109 most common of the 191 surnames counted. Roughly one in every 13,625 South Koreans is a Sunwoo. It is a rare surname; most Koreans have never met a Sunwoo.
How to write Sunwoo in Korean
In Hangul, Sunwoo is written 선우. Its Hanja (Chinese character) is 鮮于. Unlike many Korean surnames, Sunwoo has a single Hanja form, so every Sunwoo in Korea shares the same character.
What does Sunwoo mean?
The character 鮮于 means a two-syllable surname of Xianyu origin. 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 Sunwoo clans (bon-gwan)
Korean surnames are subdivided by bon-gwan — the ancestral hometown of the clan founder. Two people named Sunwoo from different bon-gwan are considered unrelated. The best-known Sunwoo clans are: Taewon Sunwoo. The place name comes first (for example "Gimhae Kim" means the Kim clan whose founder settled in Gimhae).
How common is Sunwoo?
Sunwoo is rare Korean surname. Just above it in the rankings is Beom (3,838) and just below it is Seung (3,430). 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
Sunwoo 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 Seonu, and the older McCune–Reischauer system gives Sŏnu. Other spellings you will see in real life include Sunwoo, Seonwoo, Sonu, Sunoo, Sunu. 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 선우.
How to pronounce Sunwoo
Sunwoo (선우) is pronounced roughly as the Revised Romanization "Seonu" reads, with even stress on each syllable — Korean does not stress one syllable over another the way English does. Vowels are pure and short: "eo" is the "u" in "sun", "eu" is a tight "oo" with unrounded lips, and "ae" rhymes with "day".
Is Sunwoo 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: 鮮于 is Xiānyú in Mandarin and Tiên Vu in Vietnamese. A Korean Sunwoo 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 "Sunwoo" 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 Sunwoo
Is Sunwoo a Korean or Chinese last name?
Sunwoo as spelled is Korean (선우). The Hanja 鮮于 is also used as a surname in China and Vietnam, but with different romanizations (Xiānyú in Mandarin, Tiên Vu in Vietnamese). The families are not related.
How many people have the last name Sunwoo?
3,648 people in South Korea had the surname Sunwoo (선우) in the 2015 census, or under 0.01% of the population. That makes it the #109 most common Korean surname.
How do you write Sunwoo in Korean?
Sunwoo is written 선우 in Hangul. In Hanja it is 鮮于.
What does the Korean last name Sunwoo mean?
The Hanja 鮮于 means "a two-syllable surname of Xianyu origin". Korean surname meanings come from the Chinese character the name is written with, not from the Korean sound.
Is Sunwoo a rare Korean last name?
Yes. With 3,648 holders it ranks #109 of 191 — well outside the common surnames. See our list of rare Korean last names for others like it.
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.