Humanverse

Charity vs Chase

American parents have registered 184,958 Chases since 1880, against 35,557 Charitys. Chase is still ahead, with 1,939 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Charity against Chase, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Charity Chase

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, Charity for 102 years and Chase for 44 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Charity Chase
Total US births 35,557184,958
Most in one year 1,4287,494
Babies in 2025 971,939
Estimated living today 32,000181,000
Median age today 4019
Peak year 19752009
Best rank 183rd girls61st boys
Rank in 2025 1,981st192nd
First recorded 18801885
Girls / boys 35,518 / 393,798 / 181,160

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 Chases are over 19. That is 21 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 Chase
England and Wales 1633,684

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 Chase.