Chī
given name · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Chī is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Hokkien or 徐 (Chhî) or 錢／钱 (Chîⁿ).
- USUnited States1 in 46K(measured from records)
- ITItaly≈1 in 66Kas Ci
- NONorway1 in 109K
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 Chī itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 141 (measured from records)
- 1 in 46K (inferred from the name graph)
7,273 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Ci in US United States, IT Italy, ES Spain, Ци in CN China, Či in LT Lithuania 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)
From Hokkien or 徐 (Chhî) or 錢／钱 (Chîⁿ).
Sources 3
- Wiktionary
- Chinese Surnames Encyclopedia (Section 2)
- Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)
Attested across 26 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Chī 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 | 7,273 | 1 in 46K | 8.5K | Ci | 141 |
| CN China | ≈6,900 est. | ≈1 in 202K | — | Ци | 18 |
| IT Italy | ≈940 est. | ≈1 in 66K | 1 | Ci | 35 |
| DE Germany | ≈690 est. | ≈1 in 116K | — | Çi | 39 |
| ES Spain | 398as Qi | 1 in 126K | 398 | Ci | 26 |
| LT Lithuania | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Či | 6 |
| FI Finland | 117as Qi | 1 in 48K | 269 | — | 1 |
| NO Norway | 50 | 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); 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)
Chī is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Japanese, Rōmaji transcription of チー
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Chinese, Hanyu Pinyin reading of 吂
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)
- Chi Jianb. 269jin dynasty general
- Chi Huib. 468concubine of Emperor Wu of Liang
- Xi Yuanhongb. 1493not in their usual nameMing dynasty person CBDB=202123
- Xi Judeb. 1539not in their usual nameMing dynasty person (CBDB = 205932)
- Xi Entingb. 1946CNnot in their usual nameChinese table tennis player (1946-2019)
- Xiaoxing Xib. 1958CNnot in their usual nameChinese American physicist
- Xi Qinot in their usual nameSong dynasty person CBDB = 46366
- Xi Kuinot in their usual nameMing dynasty person CBDB = 67934
- Chi Xuanwife of Wang Xizhi
- Xi Xinnot in their usual nameMing dynasty person CBDB = 283969
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
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Chī mean, and where does it come from?
- From Hokkien or 徐 (Chhî) or 錢／钱 (Chîⁿ). Recorded by Wiktionary and Chinese Surnames Encyclopedia (Section 2) and 1 other source.
- Is Chī a male or female name?
- Chī is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Chī have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 7.3 thousand people named Chī, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ci.
- Where is Chī most common?
- Chī is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 46 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Chī?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,273 people named Chī in 2010, about 1 in 46 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Chī?
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/ch%C4%ABThe 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, “Chī”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.