Čha
given name · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Čha is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Korea than in any other country, where it is the 44th most common surname. Recorded meaning: From Chinese 茶 (chá), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-la, via two routes: in some cases from Hindustani चा (cā) / چا (cā) (a variant of the same root, from Persian چا, which led to chai), from Northern Chi.
- USUnited States1 in 34K(measured from records)
- KRSouth Korea1 in 393as 채
- UYUruguay1 in 9.1K
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 Čha 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.
- South Korea (measured from records)
- Sources
- 363 (measured from records)
- 1 in 9.1K (inferred from the name graph)
131,757 named 채, 2015
Highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Chae in CN China, JM Jamaica, KP North Korea, 채 in KR South Korea and Cha in US United States.
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)
- Chinese茶chá(measured from records)
- Proto-Sino-Tibetan*s-la(measured from records)
- Hindustaniचाcā(measured from records)
- Persianچا(measured from records)
- NorthernChinese(measured from records)
From Chinese 茶 (chá), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-la, via two routes: in some cases from Hindustani चा (cā) / چا (cā) (a variant of the same root, from Persian چا, which led to chai), from Northern Chinese; in other cases from 茶 (chá) /t͡sʰɑː²¹/, the pronunciation found in Canton (Guangzhou), where the British bought much of their tea in the 19th century. Doublet of tea, which is from the Amoy Min Nan pronunciation tê.
Sources 3
- Digital Pāḷi Dictionary
- Wiktionary
- Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)
Attested across 27 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Čha 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KR South Korea | #44 | 131,757as 채 | 1 in 393 | 206K | 채 | 157 |
| CN China | — | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 62K | — | Chae | 32 |
| US United States | — | 9,732 | 1 in 34K | 10K | Cha | 363 |
| KP North Korea | #235 | ≈9,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | 7 | Chae | 22 |
| BR Brazil | — | 542 | 1 in 391K | 542 | — | 4 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 371 | 1 in 9.1K | 371 | — | — |
| JM Jamaica | — | ≈48 est. | ≈1 in 59K | — | Chae | 6 |
131,757 people counted by KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants, 2015. 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: KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants; KOSIS — 2015 census surnames; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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)
Čha is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In lkt, and so, therefore, because
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.
Evidence(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Čha mean, and where does it come from?
- From Chinese 茶 (chá), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-la, via two routes: in some cases from Hindustani चा (cā) / چا (cā) (a variant of the same root, from Persian چا, which led to chai), from Northern Chi… Recorded by Digital Pāḷi Dictionary and Wiktionary and 1 other source.
- Is Čha a male or female name?
- Čha 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 Čha have the most bearers?
- In South Korea, the national register counted about 132 thousand people named 채, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Čha most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Čha is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 9.1 thousand people — even though South Korea holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Čha?
- In the United States, the national register counted 9,732 people named Čha in 2010, about 1 in 34 thousand residents.
- How common is Čha compared with other names?
- In South Korea, Čha is the 44th most common surname of 14,133 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Čha?
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/%C4%8DhaThe 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, “Čha” — the 44th most common surname in South Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.