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Chad vs Chanse

American parents have registered 241,767 Chads since 1880, against 1,179 Chanses. Chad is still ahead, with 96 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Chad against Chanse, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Chad Chanse

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Chad has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1914 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2020, when Chad had 150 and Chanse had 18.

Side by side

  Chad Chanse
Total US births 241,7671,179
Most in one year 13,44154
Babies in 2025 967
Estimated living today 222,0001,100
Median age today 4625
Peak year 19721997
Best rank 25th boys1,836th boys
Rank in 2025 1,699th9,714th
First recorded 19141963
Girls / boys 1,039 / 240,72816 / 1,163

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Chads alive today are over 46; half the Chanses are over 25. That is 21 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Chad Chanse
England and Wales 1,1619

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Chad and Chanse.