Cheon (Korean surname)

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.^[1]
• Haneul Cheon (天), meaning "heaven". The 2000 census found 8,416 people in 2,668 households who used this character to write their surname.^[1]

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.^[2]

People with this surname include: