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Chelsi vs Cheryl

American parents have registered 440,517 Cheryls since 1880, against 4,050 Chelsis. Cheryl is still ahead, with 32 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Chelsi against Cheryl, 1880 to 2025 0 8k 16k 24k 32k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Chelsi Cheryl

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 113 years in which either name was published, Cheryl for 112 years and Chelsi for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Chelsi Cheryl
Total US births 4,050440,517
Most in one year 33924,178
Babies in 2025 732
Estimated living today 4,000361,000
Median age today 3366
Peak year 19911958
Best rank 648th girls13th girls
Rank in 2025 11,932nd4,352nd
First recorded 19691909
Girls / boys 4,050 / 0439,539 / 978

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 Cheryls alive today are over 66; half the Chelsis are over 33. That is 33 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 Chelsi Cheryl
Scotland 183,638
France 10835
England and Wales 121400

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: Chelsi and Cheryl.