Variant of Chauncey, from a French place name meaning chancellor or fortune.
Chauncy — also spelled Chauncey — derives from a Norman French place name, likely a village called Chancé or a locale from the Oise region of northern France. Norman settlers carried it to England as a surname after the Conquest of 1066, and it migrated to the American colonies with Puritan families who prized the name's ancient English associations. Charles Chauncy, who served as the second president of Harvard College from 1654 to 1672, planted the name firmly in New England intellectual soil, and it was borne by generations of clergy, lawyers, and statesmen thereafter.
The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw Chauncy flourish as a given name among the American elite. S. Senator from New York, embodied the name's patrician associations in the Gilded Age — he was famous for after-dinner speeches of such quality that Mark Twain once conceded defeat to him.
The name carried connotations of old money, Harvard Yard, and East Coast establishment that made it both aspirational and slightly stiff. By the mid-twentieth century, Chauncy began to feel archaic, its starchy associations proving more burden than charm. Yet it possesses real recovery potential: the nickname Chance is modern and energetic, the full form is rare enough to be distinctive, and its deep American colonial roots give it the same kind of revival appeal currently lifting names like Cornelius and Roscoe. Chauncy is patience rewarded.