Cheng

Cheng is the 865th most common surname in the United States, shared by 39,305 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 7,605.

By the numbers

People: 39,305
Rank: 865th
How common: 1 in 7,605
Per 100,000: 13.2

Where the name comes from

Origin Mandarin

From the cmn-pinyin romanization of cmn 程.

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

Who bears the name

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

Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 93.2%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 2.6%
White, not Hispanic 2.5%
Hispanic or Latino 1.3%
Black, not Hispanic 0.4%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.01%

Notable people called Cheng

Cheng Pei-pei (1946–2024)American Hong Kong actress
Chen Cheng (1897–1965)Chinese politician and soldier
François Cheng (born 1929)Chinese-born French writer, poet and calligrapher
Cheng Yi (1033–1107)Chinese philosopher
Cheng Ming (born 1986)Chinese archer
Chi Cheng (born 1944)Taiwanese track and field athlete and Republic of China politician
Cheng Fei (born 1988)Chinese gymnast, born 1988
Cheng Xiao (born 1998)Chinese singer, actress and model

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

Surnames like Cheng

Also a first name

Cheng has been given to 684 American babies as a first name since 1979, peaking in 1990. See it as a given name.

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.