Given name & surname
Cheng
Cheng is a surname from Cantonese, ultimately from Mandarin. It is used in English, French, and Tagalog.
Original Chinese程
Meaning & origin
Where it comes from
Cheng comes from Cantonese, and ultimately from Mandarin.
Adapted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
How it developed
From Cantonese 鄭, from Wade–Giles Chêng⁴, from Mandarin 鄭 (Zhèng).
Adapted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The story
Published U.S. birth records include this spelling as early as 1979. This is the earliest published observation available here, rather than a date for the name’s origin.
From dated birth records
Cheng through the years
- Babies since 1880
- 684
- 646 boys · 38 girls
- Most popular year
- 1990
- 48 babies
- 2025
- 5
- #12,389 for boys
- 2021–25 vs 2016–20
- —
- Too few births to compare
By the numbers
In 2025, this name appeared in 5 U.S. birth records for boys, ranking No. 12,389 among boys’ names. The recent annual counts are too incomplete to establish a ten-year comparison. Its largest published annual count for boys was 42 in 1990. Published U.S. population figures for this spelling include 5,656 as a first name in 2020; 39,305 as a surname in 2020.
From Social Security birth records and U.S. Census name counts for this exact spelling. Other spellings are counted separately.
Cheng’s family of names
In English usage, Cheng as a surname has a related form in CHUNG. In English usage, Cheng as a surname has a related form in CHING. In English usage, Cheng as a surname has a related form in ZHENG.
Inner ring: nicknames and forms · outer: across languages.
Nicknames & forms 3
Diminutives, pet forms, short forms and variants used alongside the name.
Across languages 15
Equivalents and cognates in other languages, plus older forms it grew from.
- 程source · Chinese
- Makotoequivalent
- Seungequivalent
- Shengequivalent
- 승equivalent
- 徵equivalent
- 承equivalent
- 正equivalent
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People named Cheng
Listed by how widely each person is written about, which says nothing about the name itself.
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