Youyou
Torn between Youyou and another name? Compare them side by side →
Meaning
drawn from a classical poem describing deer bleating over wild artemisia; famously borne by Tu Youyou, Nobel laureate who discovered the malaria treatment artemisinin
The story
Youyou carries one of the most uncanny stories in modern science. The name comes from a verse in the ancient Book of Songs in which deer call, youyou, as they graze on wild artemisia, and the family story goes that this was the verse her father drew on when Tu Youyou was born in Ningbo in 1930. Decades later, tasked with finding a malaria treatment, she combed classical Chinese medical texts and found, in a fourth-century handbook, a remedy prepared from that same plant, sweet wormwood. Her extraction of artemisinin has since saved millions of lives and earned her the 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine, and the poetic loop, a name from a verse about artemisia leading to a cure drawn from artemisia, still astonishes people who hear it. In US records Youyou is a true rarity, barely a trace even now.
How popular is Youyou around the world?
In the United States, 6 babies were named Youyou between 2020 and 2025. In Spain, 21 residents are named Youyou, ranked 30,960th among women, with a mean age of 21.5 years.
Youyou is on the official records of the United States and Spain.
United States
1 in 3.6M
In the United States, 6 babies were named Youyou between 2020 and 2025.
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Youyou has stayed rare in US records the whole time: no peak decade to name.
Births with a Social Security record. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration
Spain
1 in 2.1M
In Spain, 21 residents are named Youyou, ranked 30,960th among women, with a mean age of 21.5 years.
Residents of Spain on 1 January 2025. Spain publishes how old a name’s living bearers are, not a birth series, so there is no year chart. Source: INE (Spain), Censo de Población anual, 1 January 2025
Not on the record in 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 Youyou deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Youyou 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 Youyou fits with your family’s names and surname.
Does Youyou fit YOUR family?
nametree reads your family’s names and finds the ones that belong. Free, private, no ads.
Add Youyou to your family’s tree →