Chau — unisex name

What the Data Says About Chau

The Social Security Administration has registered 389 babies named Chau between 1975 and 2022, spanning 48 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Chau currently falls outside the top 1,000 girls' names for 2022. The name reached its historical peak in 1980, when 22 babies received it in a single year. Chau is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 107 additional births since 1976.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Chau performed strongest in the 1980s, accumulating 158 births during that ten-year window. Across the 6 decades of recorded activity, Chau shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in California, which accounts for 89 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Texas. In total, SSA state-level files list Chau in 2 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Chau in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 389 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.