Chi

8,510 people in the United States were counted with the surname Chi in the 2020 census, making it the 4,052nd most common in the country. That is about one person in 35,100.

By the numbers

People: 8,510
Rank: 4,052nd
How common: 1 in 35,100
Per 100,000: 2.9

Where the name comes from

From the Wade-Giles romanization of the cmn Chinese 齊.

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

Who bears the name

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

Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 84.2%
Hispanic or Latino 7.1%
White, not Hispanic 3.1%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 2.9%
Black, not Hispanic 2.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.1%

Notable people called Chi

Chi Haotian (born 1929)former Minister of National Defense of China

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

Surnames like Chi

Also a first name

Chi has been given to 1,326 American babies as a first name since 1970, peaking in 2023. 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.