Chaïn
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Chaïn is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In the Netherlands it is the 3rd most common surname. Recorded meaning: From Middle English cheyne, chaine, from Old French chaine, chaene (“chain”), from Latin catēna (“chain”), from Proto-Indo-European *kat- (“to braid, twist; hut, shed”). Doublet of catena.
- BRBrazil1 in 286K(measured from records)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 880as Cheong
- SGSingapore≈1 in 1.1Kas Cheong
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 Chaïn itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 311 (measured from records)
- 1 in 286K (inferred from the name graph)
169,580 named Chen, 2010
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Brazil
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)19 other spellings are counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Jong in US United States, NL Netherlands, ES Spain, Cheong in MY Malaysia, SG Singapore, HK Hong Kong and Chain in IN India.
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)- Middle Englishcheyne(measured from records)
- Old Frenchchaine“chain”(measured from records)
- Latincatēna“chain”(measured from records)
- Proto-Indo-European*kat-“to braid“to braid, twist; hut, shed”(measured from records)
From Middle English cheyne, chaine, from Old French chaine, chaene (“chain”), from Latin catēna (“chain”), from Proto-Indo-European *kat- (“to braid, twist; hut, shed”). Doublet of catena.
Cited for this meaning 2
- 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples)
- Wiktionary
Attested across 24 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Chaïn 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 | — | 169,580as Chen | 1 in 2K | 234K | Jong | 311 |
| MY Malaysia | #62 | ≈37,000 est. | ≈1 in 884 | 1.7K | Cheong | 134 |
| ES Spain | — | 26,262as Chen | 1 in 1.9K | 26K | Jong | 43 |
| IN India | — | 12,005as Chari | 1 in 110K | 12K | Chain | 69 |
| AR Argentina | — | 10,533as Chen | 1 in 4.3K | 11K | — | 1 |
| SG Singapore | #44 | ≈5,900 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Cheong | 165 |
| HK Hong Kong | #130 | ≈3,900 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Cheong | 69 |
| NL Netherlands | #3 | 1,795as Jong | 1 in 9.6K | 1.8K | Jong | 205 |
| BR Brazil | — | 741 | 1 in 286K | 2.5K | — | 5 |
169,580 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling chen. 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; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); data.gov.my — Name Popularity Dashboard (JPN, by decade and ethnicity); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror). 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).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Chaïn mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English cheyne, chaine, from Old French chaine, chaene (“chain”), from Latin catēna (“chain”), from Proto-Indo-European *kat- (“to braid, twist; hut, shed”). Doublet of catena. Recorded by 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples) and Wiktionary.
- Is Chaïn a male or female name?
- Chaïn is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Chaïn have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 170 thousand people named Chen, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Chaïn most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Chaïn is densest in Brazil — about 1 in 286 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Chaïn?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 741 people named Chaïn, about 1 in 286 thousand residents.
- How common is Chaïn compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Chaïn is the 3rd most common surname of 284,143 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Chaïn?
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/cha%C3%AFnThe 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, “Chaïn” — the 3rd most common surname in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.