Chiu-Wai
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Meaning
greatness at court (朝偉); famously borne by Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Cannes Best Actor winner (In the Mood for Love, 2000); distinct from Tony Leung Ka-fai (梁家輝)
The story
Hong Kong screen credits often carry two names at once, and Tony Leung Chiu-wai keeps both: an English name in front, the Cantonese given name behind it. His career began in the 1980s and gathered an extensive list of awards, and the one the world cites most came from In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar-wai's film from 2000, in which he plays a self-controlled victim of adultery. The role earned him the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival. To Cantonese speakers Chiu-wai is simply a given name, two characters romanized for English-language settings; this collection records the reading greatness at court. In American birth records the name is nearly absent, which describes the records rather than the name. He never needed to choose between his two names, and the credits never asked him to.
How popular is Chiu-Wai around the world?
Chiu-Wai does not appear in US Social Security baby-name records, which list only names given to at least five babies in a year. There is no popularity curve to chart: a genuinely rare pick.
United States
under 5 a year
Chiu-Wai does not appear in US Social Security baby-name records, which list only names given to at least five babies in a year. There is no popularity curve to chart: a genuinely rare pick.
Births with a Social Security record. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration
Not on the record in Spain, Mexico City, Argentina, Puerto Rico, England and Wales, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland and Poland: those registries withhold small counts, so rare uses may sit below their floors.
Not on the Chile record: nametree keeps spellings that reached 5 registrations in some year, so rarer uses are not shown. Not on the Montevideo record for 1940 to 2011: that registry withholds nothing, so this spelling was not given there in those years. Not on the France record: nametree keeps spellings that reached 20 births in some year, so rarer uses are not shown. Not on the South Australia record for 1944 to 2017: that registry withholds nothing, so this spelling was not given there in those years. Not on the Austria record for 1984 to 2025: Statistik Austria publishes every first name down to a single birth, so this name was not given there in those years (before 2010 the record covers babies with Austrian citizenship only). Not on Norway’s list: Statistics Norway lists only first names carried by 200 or more living people, so rarer names are not shown.
Keep exploring
The Chiu-Wai deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Chiu-Wai truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Chiu-Wai fits with your family’s names and surname.
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