Yun-Fat
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Meaning
enriching prosperity (潤發); famously borne by Chow Yun-fat, iconic Hong Kong leading man (A Better Tomorrow, Hard Boiled)
The story
The world usually meets Hong Kong actors through an English name. Chow Yun-fat traveled the other way: early in his career he was known as Donald Chow, yet the name that stuck in credits around the world is the Cantonese one. Born on Lamma Island in 1955 to a father who worked on an oil tanker and a mother who cleaned and farmed vegetables, he starred in John Woo's A Better Tomorrow in 1986, a gangster melodrama that swept box offices in Asia and established him as a megastar. In 2000 he played the swordsman Li Mu-bai in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a winner at the international box office and at the Oscars. In American birth records Yun-Fat sits at the floor; that measures what those records capture, not the name's life at home. Some names cross into English by translation. This one crossed on film reels, tones intact.
How popular is Yun-Fat around the world?
Yun-Fat 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
Yun-Fat 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.
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The Yun-Fat deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Yun-Fat 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 Yun-Fat fits with your family’s names and surname.
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