Cheon 천 — Korean last name
Is Cheon a Korean last name?
Yes. Cheon (Hangul: 천, Hanja: 千) is a Korean family name recorded in the 2015 South Korean census with 121,927 holders, making it the #49 most common of the 191 surnames counted. Roughly one in every 408 South Koreans is a Cheon. It is a well-established name you will meet regularly in Korea and in Korean communities abroad.
How to write Cheon in Korean
In Hangul, Cheon is written 천. The same Hangul syllable is used by 3 different Hanja (Chinese characters): 千, 天, 川. Each character is technically a separate surname with its own clans and ancestry, even though they sound identical and are romanized the same way. The most common by far is 千.
What does Cheon mean?
The character 千 means thousand (千); heaven (天); river (川). As with most Korean surnames, the meaning comes from the Chinese character rather than from the Korean sound, so it says something about how the name was first written down (often a place, a virtue, an object or a Chinese dynasty) rather than describing the family. Koreans rarely think about the literal meaning of a surname in daily life, but it matters for genealogy and for choosing given names that pair well with it.
Major Cheon clans (bon-gwan)
Korean surnames are subdivided by bon-gwan — the ancestral hometown of the clan founder. Two people named Cheon from different bon-gwan are considered unrelated. The best-known Cheon clans are: Yeongyang Cheon. The place name comes first (for example "Gimhae Kim" means the Kim clan whose founder settled in Gimhae).
How common is Cheon?
Cheon is common Korean surname. Just above it in the rankings is Bang (129,559) and just below it is Kong (92,340). For comparison, Kim, the most common surname, has 10,689,967 holders. All figures come from Statistics Korea's 2015 Population and Housing Census, which only counts surnames held by five or more people.
Spellings and romanization
Cheon is the spelling most Korean families use on passports and in English. The official Revised Romanization (used by the South Korean government since 2000) is Cheon, and the older McCune–Reischauer system gives Ch'ŏn. Other spellings you will see in real life include Chun, Chon, Chen, Choun, Cheun. The variety exists because Korean passport rules let each family choose its own romanization, so spellings drifted over generations of emigration; in Korean, every one of these is the same 천.
How to pronounce Cheon
Cheon (천) is pronounced roughly as the Revised Romanization "Cheon" reads, with even stress on each syllable — Korean does not stress one syllable over another the way English does. Vowels are pure and short: "eo" is the "u" in "sun", "eu" is a tight "oo" with unrounded lips, and "ae" rhymes with "day".
Is Cheon Chinese or Korean?
Both, in a sense — the character is shared, the family is not. Korean surnames were written with Chinese characters for over a thousand years, so nearly every Korean surname has a Chinese (and Vietnamese) reading: 千 is Qiān in Mandarin and Thiên in Vietnamese. A Korean Cheon and a Chinese family with the same character are not related; they simply adopted the same character at different times and places. If someone spells their name "Cheon" they are almost certainly Korean, because the Chinese and Vietnamese romanizations look different. See our full guide to Korean vs Chinese last names.
Related Korean surnames
Frequently asked questions about Cheon
Is Cheon a Korean or Chinese last name?
Cheon as spelled is Korean (천). The Hanja 千 is also used as a surname in China and Vietnam, but with different romanizations (Qiān in Mandarin, Thiên in Vietnamese). The families are not related.
How many people have the last name Cheon?
121,927 people in South Korea had the surname Cheon (천) in the 2015 census, or 0.25% of the population. That makes it the #49 most common Korean surname.
How do you write Cheon in Korean?
Cheon is written 천 in Hangul. In Hanja it is 千 or 天 or 川, which are separate lineages sharing one pronunciation.
What does the Korean last name Cheon mean?
The Hanja 千 means "thousand (千); heaven (天); river (川)". Korean surname meanings come from the Chinese character the name is written with, not from the Korean sound.
Source: Statistics Korea (KOSIS), 2015 Population and Housing Census, surnames by Hangul with five or more holders (total population 49,705,663). Hanja meanings from standard Hanja dictionaries. Check another surname.