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Charley vs Charlotte

American parents have registered 454,204 Charlottes since 1880, against 35,321 Charleys. Charlotte is still ahead, with 13,408 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Charley 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 143 years and Charley for 3 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Charley Charlotte
Total US births 35,321454,204
Most in one year 71913,408
Babies in 2025 44313,408
Estimated living today 17,000323,000
Median age today 1413
Peak year 19202025
Best rank 249th boys2nd girls
Rank in 2025 1,826th2nd
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 11,347 / 23,974453,433 / 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.

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 Charley Charlotte
France 1,245155,075
England and Wales 6,38590,072
Scotland 8516,992
Ireland 2863,739
Northern Ireland 2332,212

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: Charley and Charlotte.