宇 yǔ — what the character means in a Chinese name

What 宇 means in a Chinese nameyǔ

9,874 real names in the 1.14M-name corpus♂ 8,199 · ♀ 1,6756 strokesdata & verification

tier B

屋檐，房屋；引申为空间、气度。

The eaves of a house — and from there, room, and breadth.

1 处原典 · 1 部典籍 · 全部可核

胥宇 Looking over a place to live

爰及姜女，聿来胥宇。

And with the lady Jiang, he came to look over the site for a dwelling.

诗经 · 绵 · our translation

They come to inspect a place to live. 宇 begins as a roof, then becomes room. 太王带着姜女来看可以安家的地方。「宇」的本义是屋檐屋宇，名字取的是「有容身之处」，再引申为气度。

宇宙屋宇宇清宇之文宇

In a name

Room to stand in, before room to be.

「宇」先是有地方容身，才是有容。

1 sourced citation · every line verified character-for-character against a versioned corpus — read or verify the dataset