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Charleigh vs Charlie

American parents have registered 224,639 Charlies since 1880, against 9,455 Charleighs. Charlie is still ahead, with 4,620 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Charleigh against Charlie, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Charleigh Charlie

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

Charlie has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2018, when Charleigh had 686 and Charlie had 3,581.

Side by side

  Charleigh Charlie
Total US births 9,455224,639
Most in one year 7384,620
Babies in 2025 3374,620
Estimated living today 9,400117,000
Median age today 817
Peak year 20191919
Best rank 433rd girls66th boys
Rank in 2025 811th145th
First recorded 19851880
Girls / boys 9,455 / 040,359 / 184,280

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 Charlies alive today are over 17; half the Charleighs are over 8. That is 9 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 Charleigh Charlie
England and Wales 681114,450
Ireland 137,453
Scotland 446,596

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: Charleigh and Charlie.