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Name Lineage

    The surname Chess

    A place surname, carried by 1,743 people in the United States.

    1 syllable Soundex C200

    Chess: #16,481 of 162,253 surnames in the 2010 US Census #1Smith#160,975Doriott#10Martinez#100Jimenez#1,000Archer Chess #16,481, 1,743 people Chess: #16,481 of 162,253 surnames in the 2010 US Census #1Smith#160,975Doriott#100Jimenez Chess #16,481, 1,743 people
    Every surname held by 100 or more people in the 2010 US Census, most common on the left (162,253 in all). Chess is more common than 89.8% of them.

    Origin

    The river name is a back-formation from Chesham, a town at the head of the river.

    Chess is a place surname: taken from where an ancestor lived or came from.

    Origin from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0).

    How common it is

    2010 US Census

    There were 1,743 people named Chess in the United States in 2010, about 1 in every 177,135 Americans. That is down 5.6% since 2000, when the Census counted 1,846.

    #16,481
    rank among US surnames
    1,743
    people in 2010
    0.6
    per 100,000 Americans
    -5.6%
    change since 2000 (was #14,755)
    RankSurnamePeople1 in
    #16,475Lacher1,744177,033
    #16,481Chess1,743177,135

    Who is named Chess

    Race and Hispanic origin as people reported it in the 2010 Census

    68% of people named Chess identified as white (not Hispanic), 27% as Black (not Hispanic) and 1.8% as two or more races.

    • White (not Hispanic) 68%
    • Black (not Hispanic) 27%
    • Two or more races 1.8%
    • Hispanic or Latino (any race) 1.7%
    • Asian and Pacific Islander 0.8%
    • American Indian and Alaska Native 0.4%

    Compare: most common surnames among white Americans.

    Famous Chesss

    1 notable person on Wikidata, most written-about first

    • Phil Chess
      American record executive (1921–2016)

    Spellings and sound-alikes

    Useful when a record has your ancestor under another spelling

    Surnames that sound like Chess

    Chess has the Soundex code C200, the code US census indexes have used since the 1930s. Every surname with code C200.

    Questions

    Where does the surname Chess come from?
    The river name is a back-formation from Chesham, a town at the head of the river.
    How common is the surname Chess?
    1,743 people in the United States had the surname Chess in the 2010 Census, about 1 in every 177,135 Americans. It ranked 16,481st of 162,253 surnames.
    What ethnicity is the surname Chess?
    In the 2010 Census, 68% of people named Chess identified as white (not Hispanic), and 27% as Black (not Hispanic).
    Who is the most famous person named Chess?
    Phil Chess, American record executive (1921–2016).
    Where is the surname Chess most common?
    Wikidata records people named Chess in the United States.
    What type of surname is Chess?
    Chess is a place surname, taken from where an ancestor lived or came from.
    Is the surname Chess getting more or less common?
    Less common. 1,846 people carried it in the 2000 Census and 1,743 in 2010, down 5.6%.