Cheney

Cheney is the 2,689th most common surname in the United States, shared by 13,085 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 22,800.

By the numbers

People: 13,085
Rank: 2,689th
How common: 1 in 22,800
Per 100,000: 4.4

Where the name comes from

Variant of Chesney.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Cheney described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 87.4%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.7%
Hispanic or Latino 3.5%
Black, not Hispanic 3.2%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.3%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.8%

Notable people called Cheney

Dick Cheney (1941–2025)Vice President of the United States from 2001 to 2009
Liz Cheney (born 1966)United States Representative from Wyoming from 2017 to 2023
Lynne Cheney (born 1941)Second Lady of the United States from 2001 to 2009
Dorothy Cheney (1916–2014)American tennis player
Mary Cheney (born 1969)American politician

People named Cheney with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Cheney

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.