Chinn
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Chinn is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: from a medieval nickname for someone with a prominent chin, or for a man without a beard.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 46K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 50K
- USUnited States1 in 54K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 340 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 26K (inferred from the name graph)
6,211 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
New Zealand, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from a medieval nickname for someone with a prominent chin, or for a man without a beard
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Chinn 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 | 6,211 | 1 in 54K | 6.2K | Chinn | 340 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 46K | listed | Chinn | 134 |
| DZ Algeria | ≈900 est. | ≈1 in 48K | — | Chinn | 1 |
| CA Canada | ≈750 est. | ≈1 in 50K | — | Chinn | 76 |
| EG Egypt | ≈680 est. | ≈1 in 153K | — | Chinn | 3 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | Chinn | 40 |
6,211 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register. 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)
Chinn 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 English, chin or else for someone notably clean-shaven, from OE cin chin. Var. (of i): Chicken. Chiorrini see Melchior
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In Irish, analytic past indicative of cinn
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Scottish Gaelic, lenited form of cinn
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)
- Julia Chinnb. 1790USAmerican slave
- Thomas Withers Chinnb. 1791USAmerican politician (1791-1852)
- Joseph Chinnb. 1798USAmerican politician (1798-1840)
- Trevor Chinnb. 1937NZNew Zealand glaciologist, geologist and meteorologist
- Nicky Chinnb. 1945GBEnglish songwriter and record producer
- Lori Tan Chinnb. 1948USAmerican actress
- Betty Kwan Chinnb. 1955USAmerican philanthropist
- Carl Chinnb. 1956GBBritish historian, author and radio presenter
- Simon Chinnb. 2000GBBritish film producer
- Jeanne ChinnUSAmerican film and television actress
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)
Attested in 17 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 6.2K | #5,601 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 6.1K | #5,220 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 5.9K | #5,660 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Chinn mean, and where does it come from?
- from a medieval nickname for someone with a prominent chin, or for a man without a beard Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Chinn have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 6.2 thousand people named Chinn, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled chinn.
- How common is the name Chinn?
- In the United States, the national register counted 6,211 people named Chinn in 2010, about 1 in 54 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Chinn?
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/chinnThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Chinn”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.