Chin is a surname. As a Chinese surname or Korean surname, it could originate from various Chinese characters (including, , and ), and it is also a surname in other cultures as well.

Origins

As a Chinese surname, Chin could originate from numerous Chinese characters including the following, listed by their spelling in Mandarin Pinyin: As a Korean surname, Chin is the McCune–Reischauer romanisation of the four surnames more commonly spelled Jin in the Revised Romanization of Korean (IPA: ). There is no modern Korean surname which Revised Romanization would spell as Chin (친). As an English surname, Chin is a variant spelling of Chinn (from Middle English or ), which originated as a nickname for people with prominent or distinctive chins.

Statistics

The 2000 South Korean census found 170,980 people with the four Korean surnames spelled Chin in McCune–Reischauer. However, relatively few South Koreans with these surnames choose to spell them as Chin. In a study based on year 2007 application data for South Korean passports, 94.3% of the applicants with one of these surnames chose the spelling Jin for their passport, while only 4.7% chose the spelling Chin. According to statistics cited by Patrick Hanks, 1,504 people on the island of Great Britain and 17 on the island of Ireland bore the surname Chin in 2011. In 1881 there were 53 people with the surname in Great Britain, primarily at Cornwall. The 2010 United States Census found 27,487 people with the surname Chin, making it the 1,279th-most-common name overall. This represented an increase in absolute numbers, but a decrease in relative frequency, from 25,673 (1,255th-most-common) in the 2000 Census. In both censuses, slightly more than three quarters of the bearers of the surname identified as Asian, about 6% as White, and about 6% as Black. It was the 50th-most-common surname among respondents to the 2000 Census who identified as Asian.

People

Government, law, and politics

Music

Science and engineering

Sport

Television and film

Writers and humanities scholars

Other

Fictional characters