Či
surname · Latin script
Či is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Či is also written Ци in Cyrillic and צה in Hebrew.
- ITItaly≈1 in 49K(inferred from the name graph)
- MXMexico≈1 in 640Kfew records
- CRCosta Rica≈1 in 1.5M
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Či itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 141 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 22K (inferred from the name graph)
7,273 named Chi, 2010
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Lithuania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Či in other scripts: Cyrillic and Hebrew
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Ci in US United States, IT Italy, ES Spain and 1 more and Çi in DE Germany.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)姓 , 见 《 姓 苑 》(7,21,62) 。 居 于 刺 门 者 以 为 氏 , 见 张 潮 4 姓氏 五 书 注 》(62 ) 。
Cited for this meaning 4
- Digital Pāḷi Dictionary
- Chinese Surnames Encyclopedia (Section 2)
- Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)
- Skok, Etimologijski rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (1971-74)
Attested across 26 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Či is found
(measured from records)Či counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 7,273as Chi | 1 in 46K | 8.5K | Ci | 141 |
| IT Italy | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 49K | 1 | Ci | 35 |
| DE Germany | ≈730 est. | ≈1 in 115K | — | Çi | 39 |
| ES Spain | 398as Qi | 1 in 126K | 398 | Ci | 26 |
| BR Brazil | 313as Chi | 1 in 676K | 313 | Ci | 36 |
| LT Lithuania | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Či | 6 |
| FI Finland | 117as Qi | 1 in 48K | 269 | — | 1 |
| NO Norway | 50as Chi | 1 in 109K | 194 | — | 1 |
7,273 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling chi. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Či is also recorded in 6 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In qfa-yen-pro, to pluck, tear out
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
In xgn-pro, you (personal pronoun)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In sla-pro, if, whether
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In zlw-ocs, whether, if
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latvian, savienojumā "či, čī" lieto lai atdarinātu zīlītes balss skaņas
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
In Latvian, Ezoterismā vitāls spēks, kas izpaužas materiālajā pasaulē
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Deposed Crown Prince Yi Jib. 1598KRnot in their usual nameKorean Crown Prince
- Johnnie Tob. 1955CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong filmmaker (born 1955)
- Katherine Taib. 1974USnot in their usual nameAmerican attorney (born 1974)
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Či?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 7.3 thousand people named Chi, more than in any other country we hold. After it come Italy, Germany, Spain and Brazil; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Či?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,273 people named Chi in 2010, about 1 in 46 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Či?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/%C4%8DiThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Či” — ranked 2281st in the United States (Census Bureau). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.