Used from the tribal name Cheyenne, referring to the Native people and place-name tradition of the American Plains.
Cheyenne comes into English from the name of the Cheyenne people, a Native American nation of the Great Plains. The word most likely passed through French from a Dakota term, often interpreted as something like “people of a different speech” or “red talkers,” though, as with many names shaped by colonial contact, its exact linguistic path is complex and partly debated. As a personal name, Cheyenne is therefore not ancient in the European naming tradition; it is a modern given name built from an ethnonym, carrying with it the sound of the plains, the American West, and a layered history of encounter, migration, and identity.
As a baby name, Cheyenne rose strongly in the United States in the late 20th century, especially from the 1970s through the 1990s, when place names, Western imagery, and names associated with open landscapes became fashionable. Its appeal lay partly in its flowing sound and partly in its vivid cultural imagery: rodeos, frontier mythology, and the capital city of Wyoming all helped reinforce its presence in the imagination. At the same time, the name sits in a sensitive space, because it reflects the name of a living Indigenous people rather than simply a detached historical term.
In popular culture, Cheyenne has often been used to evoke independence and frontier spirit, appearing in television, music, and fiction as a name that sounds windswept and self-possessed. Over time its perception has shifted from distinctly Western to more broadly American and modern, though it still retains that prairie-wide sense of drama and motion. It is a name with beauty and momentum, but also one that quietly carries the deeper history of Native nations whose names entered mainstream naming culture by complicated routes.