Chen
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: ‘person from Chen’, Hunan province, China
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/tʃɛn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Chen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 12th most common surname.
- TWTaiwan≈1 in 17(inferred from the name graph)
- CNChina≈1 in 85
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 295
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #332 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 560 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 17 (inferred from the name graph)
≈16,000,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Taiwan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
‘person from Chen’, Hunan province, China.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
How Chen is read(measured from records)
Chen is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English40%
‘person from Chen’, Hunan province, China.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
A Chinese person whose name is not known to the speaker.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Chinese36%
Hanyu Pinyin reading of 傖 /伧
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Chen, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Chen 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | #262 | ≈16,000,000 est. | ≈1 in 85 | — | Chen | 275 |
| TW Taiwan | #57 | ≈1,400,000 est. | ≈1 in 17 | — | Chen | 251 |
| US United States | #97 | 169,580 | 1 in 2K | 234K | Chen | 560 |
| MY Malaysia | #54 | ≈65,000 est. | ≈1 in 500 | 1.7K | Chen | 133 |
| AU Australia | #33 | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 831 | 1 | Chen | 291 |
| HK Hong Kong | #28 | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 295 | 425 | Chen | 138 |
| SG Singapore | #12 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 448 | — | Chen | 190 |
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; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); data.gov.my — Name Popularity Dashboard (JPN, by decade and ethnicity); This page contains a database of Hong Konger surnames and first names categorized by frequency and gender, published by. 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)
Chen is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Russian, var of Chan.
as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
In Vietnamese, to get into a crowd, to elbow into, to jostle
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Filipino, a Chinese surname from Mandarin
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Pridi Banomyongb. 1900THnot in their usual nameThai prime minister (1900-1983)
- Chun Doo-hwanb. 1931KRnot in their usual name11th and 12th President of the Republic of Korea (1931~2021)
- Chen Shui-bianb. 1950TW10th and 11th President of Republic of China(Taiwan) (2000–2008)
- Jackie Chanb. 1954CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actor and martial artist (born 1954)
- Donnie Yenb. 1963CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actor, film director and martial artist (born 1963)
- Jeon Do-yeonb. 1973KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actress
- Steve Chenb. 1978TWChinese-American businessman
- Vanessa-Maeb. 1978SGnot in their usual nameBritish violinist
- Priscilla Chanb. 1985USnot in their usual nameAmerican pediatrician and philanthropist
- Jeon Jung-kookb. 1997KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean singer
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 89 sources across 44 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 234K | #93 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 170K | #150 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 106K | #260 |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Chen mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘person from Chen’, Hunan province, China. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Chen have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 16 million people named Chen in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled chen.
- How do you pronounce Chen?
- A machine transcription gives /tʃɛn/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Chen?
- In the United States, the national register counted 169,580 people named Chen in 2010, about 1 in 2.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Chen compared with other names?
- In China, Chen is the 262nd most common surname of 142,871 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Chen?
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/chenThe 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, “Chen” — the 262nd most common surname in China. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.