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Chen

Chen, also written Jin, Trần, Chin, Tan. Attested in United States of America, Spain, Italy, Belgium, France, Norway, Slovenia, Poland, Denmark, Ireland, borne by about 210,504 people in the registers this map holds.

Also written

A person linked these — Wikidata's «said to be the same as», or a family archive that worked it out from documents.

JinTrầnChinTan

The same name, spelt two ways

One systematic substitution — s for z, w for v, ch for h — where BOTH spellings are independently attested surnames. Kosina and Kozina are one man in two clerks' handwriting. Stronger than sounding alike, weaker than somebody having checked.

KhenZhenHenKen

Only sounds alike

An algorithm's guess. Useful for casting a net, and not evidence.

CenCieńCzenCheanCheinChenaCheno

What Wikidata says this name is

Copied from Wikidata, not worked out here. It is crowd-sourced and wrong in places, which is why the item is linked below rather than the claim simply repeated.

  • multiple languages the language of the name

    Which is not where a family is from. A Polish surname can be borne by people whose forebears never saw Poland, and often is.

  • Read about it on Wikipedia ↗ an article, with its own sources

Q40713504 on Wikidata ↗ — the item every line above came from.

What Wiktionary says this name is

Copied from the surname template on Wiktionary, not worked out here, and not from its etymology prose. Anyone may edit it; the page and the revision it was read at are linked below.

  • Chinese what the English entry says it is from
  • Mandarin what the Cebuano entry says it is from
  • Mandarin what the Tagalog entry says it is from
  • English · Cebuano · Tagalog recorded as a surname in these languages

    A language here is the language of the NAME, not a country a family came from — the same caveat the Wikidata section carries, and worth repeating rather than assumed read.

Chen on Wiktionary ↗ — read at revision 91528035. Text from Wiktionary, by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0.

It is also the name of a place

This is as close to an origin as this map will go. A surname that is also a place name often came from it — and often did not: plenty are occupations or patronymics that happen to collide with a place, and plenty of places are named after a family rather than the other way round. It is a fact with a source, which is more than an etymology page offers.

  • Cien Spain only a phonetic neighbour, not a spelling

Where it is borne, and where a record names it

Attested in 10 countries: United States of America, Spain, Italy, Belgium, France, Norway, Slovenia, Poland, Denmark, IrelandDenmark — attested, not countedIreland — attested, not countedPoland — 29 peopleSlovenia — 118 peopleNorway — 604 peopleFrance — 1,217 peopleBelgium — 1,574 peopleItaly — 8,987 peopleSpain — 28,395 peopleUnited States of America — 169,580 people
A dot is a country, not a place. It sits at the country's centre because a national register counts a country; nothing here says where in it these people are. A hollow ring is attested but not counted — Denmark publishes which surnames exist and not how many carry each, and a family archive finds a name without counting heads. Sizing those by a number nobody published would invent it. Blank is not absence. This draws the 10 countries where the eleven registers and eight archives behind this atlas attest the name. Most of the world has no surname register this project can read, and the ones that do and will not are listed with the reason.
Belgium, by commune. 1,574 people in 103 of Belgium's 565 communes, counted by Statbel. The biggest is Antwerpen with 212. This is the only country here that can be drawn this way — every other register counts a country and stops, so a blank elsewhere is a gap in what states publish, not in the name.
103 places drawn, the largest being Antwerpen, Leuven, Gent, Luik, Brussel, Namen, Charleroi, Bergen, Anderlecht, MechelenOttignies-Louvain-la-Neuve — 10Diest — 10Etterbeek — 10Schilde — 10Kontich — 10Kapellen — 10Aarlen — 11Genk — 11Beveren-Kruibeke-Zwijndrecht — 11Merelbeke-Melle — 11Sint-Jans-Molenbeek — 11Middelkerke — 12Herent — 12Oudergem — 12Turnhout — 12Boom — 12Hasselt — 13Seraing — 13Doornik — 13Lens — 13Aarschot — 13Ukkel — 13Ans — 14Moeskroen — 14Tervuren — 16Brugge — 19Jette — 20Sint-Pieters-Woluwe — 22Elsene — 22Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe — 24Mechelen — 25Anderlecht — 31Bergen — 38Charleroi — 40Namen — 42Brussel — 62Luik — 82Gent — 85Leuven — 136Antwerpen — 212

Country by country

Each country below can carry up to three different kinds of evidence, and none of them is the same claim. A register is a head-count — a state counted these people. A record is one document naming the surname on that ground, narrower evidence and often much older. And a volume overlapping these dates is a document from the right place and years — never a document known to name this surname. None of the three ever means the name exists in that country and nowhere else, or that it exists nowhere but here.

United States of America

169,580 Borne — a state counted them — Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2010 Census; Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2000 Census.

Whose archive to write to

277,227 of 528,875 volumes held for United States of America overlap the 1850s, 1880s, 1900s, 1910s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s — the decades Chen is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Chen. The commonest kinds: Probate, land and notarial, Civil registration and vital records, Immigration and emigration, Church and parish registers. See everything this atlas holds for United States of America →

Spain

28,395 Borne — a state counted them — Frecuencia de apellidos, Censos de población (INE).

Whose archive to write to

1 of 35,936 volumes held for Spain overlap the 1990s — the decades Chen is attested here. None is known to name Chen: a volume overlapping these years is a document from the right place and time, not a confirmed match. Worth an afternoon.

Italy

8,987 Borne — a state counted them — Italian comuni publishing their residents' surnames as open data, indexed by the national catalogue dati.gov.it..

Whose archive to write to

66 of 1,288,913 volumes held for Italy overlap the 1980s — the decades Chen is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Chen. The commonest kinds: Civil registration and vital records, Church and parish registers. See everything this atlas holds for Italy →

Belgium

1,574 Borne — a state counted them — Family names by municipality, 1 January 2026 (Statbel, TA_POP_LST_2026).

Whose archive to write to

11 of 24,426 volumes held for Belgium overlap the 1980s and 1990s — the decades Chen is attested here. None is known to name Chen: a volume overlapping these years is a document from the right place and time, not a confirmed match. Worth an afternoon.

France

1,217 Borne — a state counted them — Fichier des noms de famille 1891–2000 (INSEE, fichier national).

Whose archive to write to

5 of 1,513 volumes held for France overlap the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s — the decades Chen is attested here. None is known to name Chen: a volume overlapping these years is a document from the right place and time, not a confirmed match. Worth an afternoon.

Norway

604 Borne — a state counted them — Etternavn brukt av 200 personer eller flere (SSB tabell 12891).

Whose archive to write to

Slovenia

118 Borne — a state counted them — Family names, Slovenia, 2026 (SURS tables 05X1015S–05X1018S).

Whose archive to write to

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for Chen in Slovenia, so it cannot narrow Slovenia's 1,585 volumes by date — see Slovenia's own page for all of it.

Poland

29 Borne — a state counted them — Nazwiska występujące w rejestrze PESEL (z uwzględnieniem osób zmarłych).

Whose archive to write to

1,272 of 15,686 volumes held for Poland overlap the 1920s — the decades Chen is attested here. Too many to list, and this atlas does not know whether any one of them names Chen. The commonest kinds: Church and parish registers, Civil registration and vital records, Cemeteries and burials. See everything this atlas holds for Poland →

Denmark

Borne — a state counted them — Navne registreret i Danmark, January 2020 (Danmarks Statistik, republished by Digitaliseringsstyrelsen).

Whose archive to write to

This atlas has no birth-year evidence for Chen in Denmark, so it cannot narrow Denmark's 4,099 volumes by date — see Denmark's own page for all of it.

Ireland

Borne — a state counted them — Surnames of babies with ten or more occurrences, 2023–2025 (CSO, VSA110).

Whose archive to write to
Attested here, and nothing that survives covers those years

Chen is attested in Ireland in the 1990s. Not one of the 1,568 volumes this atlas holds for Ireland covers those years — worth knowing before an afternoon is spent on Ireland's shelf rather than after.

When it was being born, in France

INSEE counts births by surname and decade from the état civil, 1891 to 2000 — the only dated evidence in this dataset. A name that starts at zero and climbs arrived; a name that falls to nothing left, died out, or emigrated, and the decade it stops is the decade to stop searching. It counts births registered in France, so a family that emigrated in 1900 simply stops appearing, which is information rather than a defect. This name's first French births fall in 1901–1910 and its last in 1991–2000.

  • 1891–1900 —
  • 1901–1910 1
  • 1911–1920 1
  • 1921–1930 6
  • 1931–1940 10
  • 1941–1950 43
  • 1951–1960 30
  • 1961–1970 36
  • 1971–1980 78
  • 1981–1990 246
  • 1991–2000 766

Whose archive held that ground, and when

Every surname site can tell you a name is common somewhere. This one also knows which filing system held that ground in which years — and those are the two halves of one question: my people were called this, they were there, so who has the paper, and for which century. A name in Croatia before 1881 may sit in a military series and not a county one; a name in the Netherlands before 1811 has no civil record at all, only a baptism.

This is about the ground, not about your family. A register counting a name in a country says nothing about which village. And these are the pieces of a country this atlas has drawn, which in a large one may be a corner of it — Acadia reaches into Maine and is not a statement about the United States, and Bohemia's ground crosses into Poland. Each region's own page says which ground it covers. Where a country is missing below, nothing covers it yet.

United States of America
Italy
  • Carnia, Friuli 6 eras Patriarchate of Aquileia → Republic of Venice → Austria → Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy → …
  • Campania — Caserta and Naples 5 eras Kingdom of Naples → Napoleonic Kingdom of Naples → Kingdom of the Two Sicilies → Kingdom of Italy → …
  • Eastern Sicily — Catania 4 eras Kingdom of Sicily → Kingdom of the Two Sicilies → Kingdom of Italy → Italy
  • Calabria 4 eras Kingdom of Naples → Napoleonic Kingdom of Naples → Kingdom of the Two Sicilies → Italy
  • Carniola and the Slovene lands 8 eras Inner Austria → Austria → The Illyrian Provinces → Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, then Yugoslavia → …
Belgium
France
Norway
  • Norway 3 eras Denmark–Norway → Norway in union with Sweden, with its own constitution → Norway

Regions are also drawn in 4 other countries where this name is attested, further down the register's own list. The order here is how many people a register counted, so the countries above are the ones the name most belongs to.

No record region is drawn yet for Spain — which is a gap in this atlas and not a statement about that country.

Find Chen on the map →

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