Cheon

Cheon is the romanization of the Korean syllable 천, a unit that commonly appears in Korean personal names and occasionally in place names or borrowed terms. It functions both as a surname and as an element in given names, and it is also encountered in transliterations of non-Korean terms into Korean.

The meaning of Cheon depends on the hanja chosen to write the character. The most common correspondences are 天, meaning heaven or sky, and 千, meaning thousand. There are other hanja with the same pronunciation, so the precise meaning varies according to the written form.

As a surname, Cheon (천) is relatively uncommon in Korea, but it exists as a family name with multiple possible lineages tied to different hanja. In given names, Cheon is a frequent element in two-syllable names and can combine with various second syllables to convey different intended meanings based on the selected hanja.

Romanization and variant spellings differ by system and era. In the current Revised Romanization of Korean, 천 is rendered Cheon. Older or alternative systems may render it as Ch'on, and diaspora spellings such as Chun or Chon also appear in some contexts.

In broader East Asian contexts, the syllable Cheon can appear in transliterations of Chinese or Japanese terms into Korean, or in Korean-language texts describing names and concepts that use similar-sounding characters.