Cheon (Korean surname)
| Cheon | |
| Hangul | 천 |
|---|---|
| Hanja | |
| Revised Romanization | Cheon |
| McCune–Reischauer | Ch'ŏn |
Cheon, also spelled Chun or Chon, is an uncommon Korean surname. It is written with either of two hanja:
- Ilcheon Cheon (千) meaning "thousand". This is the more common character, used as a surname by 103,811 people in 32,229 households in South Korea, according to the 2000 census.
- Haneul Cheon (天), meaning "heaven". The 2000 census found 8,416 people in 2,668 households who used this character to write their surname.
In a study by the National Institute of Korean Language based on 2007 application data for South Korean passports, it was found that 50% of people with this family name spelled it in Latin letters as Cheon in their passports, while 42% spelled it Chun, and 3.5% spelled it Chon. Rarer alternative spellings (the remaining 4.5%) included Choun and the Yale romanization Chen.
People with this surname include: