Cao (Chinese surname)
Cao () is the pinyin romanization of the Chinese surname 曹 (Cáo).
It was listed 26th among the Song-era Hundred Family Surnames.
Romanizations
Cao is romanized as Ts'ao in Wade-Giles, although the needed apostrophe is often omitted in practice. It is romanized Cho, Cou, Tso, and Chaw in Cantonese; Chou, Chô, and Chháu in Min Nan; Chau, Chow in Teochew; and Tháu in Gan.
The Vietnamese surname based on it is now written Tào; the Korean surname is now written 조 and romanized as Jo or Cho; and the Japanese surname which still employs the same Kanji is romanized Sō.
Distribution
At last count, Cao was the 30th-most-common surname in mainland China and the 58th-most-common surname on Taiwan.
In the United States, the romanization Cao is a fairly common surname, ranked 7,425th during the 1990 census but 2,986th during the year 2000 census. It is one of the few Chinese surnames whose pinyin transcription is already more common than other variants. The Wade transcription Tsao was only ranked 16,306th during the 1990 census and 12,580th during the year 2000 one. The Cantonese transcription is actually becoming less common, falling from 7,638th place to 9,925th. The Korean name Cho is more common still than Cao, befitting its frequency in Korea itself, where it makes up about 2% of the South Korean population: see Cho (Korean name).
