Toh (surname)

Not to be confused with To (surname).

Toh

Language(s)	Chinese, Korean, others
Origin
Region of origin	Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, others
Other names
Variant form(s)	Chinese: Du, Zhuo, Su Korean: Do

Toh is a surname in various cultures.

Origins

Toh may be:

• A spelling of the Hokkien pronunciation (Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Tō͘) of the Chinese surname spelled in Mandarin Pinyin as Dù (Chinese: 杜)
• A spelling of the Hokkien pronunciation (Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Toh) of the Chinese surname spelled in Mandarin Pinyin as Zhuó (Chinese: 卓)
• An alternative spelling of the Korean surname spelled in the Revised Romanisation of Korean as Do (Korean: 도).

Statistics

Toh was the 17th-most common surname among ethnic Chinese in Singapore as of 1997 (ranked by English spelling, rather than by Chinese characters). Roughly 25,300 people, or 1.0% of the Chinese Singaporean population at the time, bore the surname Toh.^[1]

The 2010 United States Census found 445 people with the surname Toh, making it the 47,614th-most-common name in the country, up from 279 (66,274th-most-common) in the 2000 Census. In both censuses, slightly more than three-quarters of the bearers of the surname identified as Asian American, and between 10% and 15% as African American.^[2]

People

People with the surname Toh include:

Chinese surname 卓

• Toh Ah Boon (卓亞文; 1860–1932), Singaporean landlord
• Toh Kian Chui (卓键水; 1927–2000), Singaporean construction industry businessman
• Patsy Toh (卓一龍; born 1940), Chinese pianist based in the United Kingdom
• Toh Guo'An (卓国安; born 1982), Singaporean footballer
• Toh Hong Huat (卓鸿发; born 1974; disappeared in 1986), Singaporean student who went missing at age 12

Chinese surname 杜

• Toh Chin Chye (杜进才; 1921–2012), Singaporean politician
• Toh Aik Choon (杜亿春; 1927–1990), Singaporean shipbuilding industry businessman
• Sylvia Toh (杜碧珠; born 1946/1947), Singaporean newspaper columnist
• Toh Wei Soong (杜维崧; born 1998), Singaporean swimmer
• Toh Ee Wei (杜依蔚; born 2000), Malaysian badminton player

Other or unknown

People with another surname spelled Toh, or whose surnames as written in Chinese characters are not available:

• Somdej Toh (1788–1872), Thai Buddhist monk
• Boniface Hie Toh (born 1936), Ivorian boxer
• Kerstin Lindblad-Toh (born 1970), Swedish geneticist
• Terry Toh (born 1974), Singaporean chess master
• Toh Hsien Min (born 1975), Singaporean poet
• Peter Toh (born 1981), American musician
• Daryl Toh (born 1986), Malaysian comic book artist
• Joanna Toh (born 1996), Singaporean netball player
• Toh Kai Wei (born 1996), Singaporean netball player
• Nicholle Toh (born 2001), Singaporean swimmer
• Chai Keong Toh, Singaporean computer scientist
• Kim-Chuan Toh (fl. 1990–present), Singaporean mathematician

References

1. "Popular Chinese Surnames in Singapore". Statistics Singapore Newsletter. Vol. 20, no. 2. October 1997. Archived from the original on 23 February 2008. Retrieved 8 January 2018.
2. "How common is your last name?". Newsday. Retrieved 5 September 2018.