The history of your name

The CHENEY surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 12,970 2563 0.005 48
United States (1880 census) 4,395 1417 0.009 88
Change since 1880 +8575 -1146 -0.004 -40
Other Countries
Australia 741 2200 0.005 45
United Kingdom 1,178 4601 0.003 26
Top States for CHENEY by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 1,272 2448 0.004 38
New York 753 2471 0.004 40
Florida 720 2816 0.005 45
Texas 707 3193 0.003 34
Massachusetts 590 1521 0.009 93
Top States for CHENEY by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Vermont 223 375 0.037 366
New Hampshire 345 512 0.028 279
Utah 541 499 0.024 242
Maine 260 963 0.020 204
Idaho 229 706 0.018 177

Notes

'A figure of zero indicates that we don't have data for this name (usually because it's quite uncommon and our stats don't go down that far). It doesn't mean that there's no-one with that name at all!

For less common surnames, the figures get progressively less reliable the fewer holders of that name there are. This data is aggregated from several public lists, and some stats are interpolated from known values. The margin of error is well over 100% at the rarest end of the table!

For less common surnames, the frequency and "per million" values may be 0 even though there are people with that name. That's because they represent less than one in a million of the population, which ends up as 0 after rounding.

It's possible for a surname to gain in rank and/or total while being less common per million people (or vice versa) as there are now more surnames in the USA as a result of immigration. In mathematical terms, the tail has got longer, with a far larger number of less common surnames.

Figures for top states show firstly the states where most people called CHENEY live. This obviously tends to be biased towards the most populous states. The second set of figures show where people called CHENEY represent the biggest proportion of the population. So, in this case, there are more people called CHENEY in California than any other state, but you are more likely to find a CHENEY by picking someone at random in Vermont than anywhere else.

Classification and Origin of CHENEY

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: Location or Geographical Feature

Data for religion and/or language relates to the culture in which the CHENEY surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the language spoken, or religion practised, by the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Data for ethnic origin relates to the region and country in which the CHENEY surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the ethnicity of the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Ethnic distribution of CHENEY in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Black/African American 368 2.84
White (Hispanic) 233 1.8
Mixed Race 184 1.42
Native American/Alaskan 149 1.15
Asian/Pacific 79 0.61
White (Caucasian) 11,956 92.18

Ethnic distribution data shows the number and percentage of people with the CHENEY surname who reported their ethnic background as being in these broad categories in the most recent national census.

Meaning of CHENEY in historical publications

(origin: Fr. Local) From Chene, an oak; Chenaie, a grove, a plantation of oaks.

Arthur, William (1857) An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names. New York: Sheldon, Blakeman. Public Domain.


CHENEY. From Quesnay In the canton of Montmartin, department of La Manche, Normandy. De Gerville, \Icm. Soc. Antiq. Normandie, 1825 ; butMr.Walfordwith more probability derives the family fromCahagnes in the department of Calvados, a village of 2000 inhabitants, lying S.W. of Caen. They held a fief of the Count of Mortaiu, and attended him to the Conquest of England ; and the feudal relation was retained long afterwards in the rape of Pevensey, co. Sussex, where their estate was called Horsted Keynes. They also denominated Milton Keynes, co. Bucks, Wiukley Keynes, co. Devon, Combe Keynes, co. Dorset, and Keynes Court, co. Wilts. Sussex Arch. Coll. i. 133. The orthography has taken numerous forms, particularly De Chaaignes de Caisneto, Keynes, de Cahaysnes, and more recently Caney and Cheney. It has also been variously latinized De Caneto, De Casincto, and De Querceto — the last under an erroneous impression that the name had its origin in chemale, a grove of oaks.

Lower, Mark A (1860) Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom. London: J.R. Smith. Public Domain.


Similar names to CHENEY

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as CHENEY.

This does not necessarily imply a direct relationship between the names, but may indicate names that could be mistaken for this one when written down or misheard.

Matches are generated automatically by a combination of Soundex, Metaphone and Levenshtein matching.

Potential typos for CHENEY

The following words are slight variants of CHENEY that are likely to be possible typos or misspellings in written material.