Humanverse

Charity vs Charlotte

American parents have registered 454,204 Charlottes since 1880, against 35,557 Charitys. Charlotte is still ahead, with 13,408 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Charity Charlotte

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

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Charlotte for 136 years and Charity for 10 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Charity Charlotte
Total US births 35,557454,204
Most in one year 1,42813,408
Babies in 2025 9713,408
Estimated living today 32,000323,000
Median age today 4013
Peak year 19752025
Best rank 183rd girls2nd girls
Rank in 2025 1,981st2nd
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 35,518 / 39453,433 / 771

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 Charitys alive today are over 40; half the Charlottes are over 13. That is 27 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

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

Country Charity Charlotte
France 20155,075
England and Wales 16390,072

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: Charity and Charlotte.