Yao or YAO may refer to: * Yao (surname), the transliteration of Chinese family names 姚, 銚, and 么 *

Yao (ruler) Emperor Yao (; traditionally c. 2356 – 2255 BCE) was a legendary Chinese ruler, according to various sources, one of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. Ancestry and early life Yao's ancestral name is Yi Qi () or Qi (), clan name is ...

, a mythical Chinese ruler and emperor *

Yao Ming Yao Ming (; born September 12, 1980) is a Chinese basketball executive and former professional player. He played for the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) and the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Associat ...

, Chinese Basketball All-Star that played for the Houston Rockets *

Euphrasie Kouassi Yao Euphrasie Kouassi Yao (also Yao Kouassi, born 18 April 1964) is an Ivorian politician, who is the current special advisor to president Alassane Ouattara in charge of gender. She has also served as the Minister for the Promotion of Women, Famil ...

, Ivorian politician * Yao people, ethnic minority group of southern China and Vietnam * Yao languages spoken by the Yao *

Yao people (East Africa) The yao people, ''wayao'', are a major Bantu ethnic and linguistic group based at the southern end of Lake Malawi, who played an important part in the history of Southeast Africa during the 19th century. The Yao are a predominantly Muslim p ...

, people of south-central Africa * Yao language, a Bantu language spoken by the waYao people in Africa *

Yao language (Trinidad) Yao (Jaoi, Yaoi, Yaio, Anacaioury) is an extinct Cariban language of Trinidad and French Guiana, attested in a single 1640 word list recorded by Joannes de Laet. It is thought that the Yao people migrated from the Orinoco to the islands perhaps a ...

, an extinct Cariban language formerly spoken on Trinidad * Yao may be short for

yaodong A yaodong () or "house cave" is a particular form of earth shelter dwelling common in the Loess Plateau in China's north. They are generally carved out of a hillside or excavated horizontally from a central "sunken courtyard". The earth that su ...

, a type of Chinese cave dwelling * Yao (Gnosticism), the name of an

archon ''Archon'' ( gr, ἄρχων, árchōn, plural: ἄρχοντες, ''árchontes'') is a Greek word that means "ruler", frequently used as the title of a specific public office. It is the masculine present participle of the verb stem αρχ-, mean ...

Gnostic Gnosticism (from grc, γνωστικός, gnōstikós, , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized pe ...

scripture *

Yao, Chad Yao ( ar, ياؤ) is a town in Chad and the capital of the Fitri department. Yao is also the name of a pre-colonial Sultanate in the same area. See the Bulala The Bilala or Bulala are a Muslim people that live around Lake Fitri, in the Batha ...

, a town in Chad * Yao, Osaka, a city in Japan ** Related: Yao Airport * Yao (爻), the term for the marks used in the preparation of trigrams and hexagrams in

I Ching The ''I Ching'' or ''Yi Jing'' (, ), usually translated ''Book of Changes'' or ''Classic of Changes'', is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. Originally a divination manual in the Western Zho ...

that is also the basis for Kangxi radical 89 * Yao, a character in the ''

Mulan Hua Mulan () is a legendary folk heroine from the Northern and Southern dynasties era (4th to 6th century CE) of Chinese history. According to legend, Mulan took her aged father's place in the conscription for the army by disguising herself as ...

'' franchise * Yao graph, a subgraph that guarantees connectivity * Yo, or Yao, an American English interjection * Mount Xiao, or Mount Yao, in Henan, China * Mount Yao (Lushan County), in Henan, China * a tribe by the shores of

Lake Malawi Lake Malawi, also known as Lake Nyasa in Tanzania and Lago Niassa in Mozambique, is an African Great Lake and the southernmost lake in the East African Rift system, located between Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. It is the fifth largest fre ...

* Medicine (short story), 1922 Chinese short story by Lu Xun ;YAO * Yaoundé Airport, IATA code YAO * Yau Oi stop, MTR station code YAO * Yunnan Astronomical Observatory, in east suburb of Kunming, Yunnan, China

See also