Chae 채 — Korean last name
Is Chae a Korean last name?
Yes. Chae (Hangul: 채, Hanja: 蔡) is a Korean family name recorded in the 2015 South Korean census with 131,757 holders, making it the #46 most common of the 191 surnames counted. Roughly one in every 377 South Koreans is a Chae. It is a well-established name you will meet regularly in Korea and in Korean communities abroad.
How to write Chae in Korean
In Hangul, Chae is written 채. The same Hangul syllable is used by 3 different Hanja (Chinese characters): 蔡, 菜, 采. 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 蔡.
What does Chae mean?
The character 蔡 means the ancient state of Cai; tortoise. 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 Chae clans (bon-gwan)
Korean surnames are subdivided by bon-gwan — the ancestral hometown of the clan founder. Two people named Chae from different bon-gwan are considered unrelated. The best-known Chae clans are: Pyeonggang Chae, Incheon Chae. The place name comes first (for example "Gimhae Kim" means the Kim clan whose founder settled in Gimhae).
How common is Chae?
Chae is common Korean surname. Just above it in the rankings is Byun (138,802) and just below it is Won (130,174). 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
Chae 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 Chae, and the older McCune–Reischauer system gives Ch'ae. Other spellings you will see in real life include Chai, Che, Chea, Cha, Choi. 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 채.
How to pronounce Chae
Chae (채) is pronounced roughly as the Revised Romanization "Chae" 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 Chae 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: 蔡 is Cài in Mandarin and Thái in Vietnamese. A Korean Chae 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 "Chae" 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 Chae
Is Chae a Korean or Chinese last name?
Chae as spelled is Korean (채). The Hanja 蔡 is also used as a surname in China and Vietnam, but with different romanizations (Cài in Mandarin, Thái in Vietnamese). The families are not related.
How many people have the last name Chae?
131,757 people in South Korea had the surname Chae (채) in the 2015 census, or 0.27% of the population. That makes it the #46 most common Korean surname.
How do you write Chae in Korean?
Chae is written 채 in Hangul. In Hanja it is 蔡 or 菜 or 采, which are separate lineages sharing one pronunciation.
What does the Korean last name Chae mean?
The Hanja 蔡 means "the ancient state of Cai; tortoise". 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.