Humanverse

Chelsey vs Cheyne

American parents have registered 31,563 Chelseys since 1880, against 1,025 Cheynes. Chelsey is still ahead, with 18 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Chelsey against Cheyne, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Chelsey Cheyne

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

Chelsey has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1969 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1980, when Chelsey had 83 and Cheyne had 81.

Side by side

  Chelsey Cheyne
Total US births 31,5631,025
Most in one year 2,88681
Babies in 2025 18under 5
Estimated living today 31,000980
Median age today 3335
Peak year 19921980
Best rank 117th girls1,079th boys
Rank in 2025 6,325thunranked
First recorded 19691971
Girls / boys 31,498 / 65115 / 910

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 Cheynes alive today are over 35; half the Chelseys are over 33. That is 2 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 Chelsey Cheyne
England and Wales 1,71815

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: Chelsey and Cheyne.