vU

Vu is a term that appears in different contexts across language, culture, and technology. In Vietnamese onomastics, Vu (often written with diacritics as Vũ) is a common surname and given name. It is used by people in Vietnam and by the Vietnamese diaspora, and pronunciation can vary depending on regional and personal naming traditions. In English-language texts, the name is frequently written as Vu without diacritics.

In academia, VU is widely known as the abbreviation for Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, a research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Founded in 1880 by Abraham Kuyper, it has grown into a multidisciplinary institution with faculties spanning the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and professional disciplines. The university has historically operated alongside other major Dutch universities and, since 2018, its medical faculty was associated with the Amsterdam UMC through a formal merger between medical centers. The VU branding remains common in university communications, campus materials, and international collaborations.

In audio and signal processing, VU stands for volume unit, a measurement used to describe perceived loudness. VU meters are devices that display signal levels in these units, providing a traditional standard for monitoring dynamics in recording and broadcasting workflows. The term is also encountered in various technical and cultural contexts where abbreviation-based naming is common.

Overall, Vu functions as a proper noun, a surname, and a technical abbreviation, with each usage grounded in a distinct field such as linguistics, higher education, and audio engineering.