Humanverse

Cheri vs Cherly

American parents have registered 36,080 Cheris since 1880, against 989 Cherlys. Cheri is still ahead, with 6 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Cheri against Cherly, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Cheri Cherly

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

Cheri has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1925 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2010, when Cheri had 12 and Cherly had 5.

Side by side

  Cheri Cherly
Total US births 36,080989
Most in one year 1,41046
Babies in 2025 6under 5
Estimated living today 31,000880
Median age today 6057
Peak year 19601966
Best rank 227th girls1,646th girls
Rank in 2025 13,208thunranked
First recorded 19251943
Girls / boys 36,068 / 12989 / 0

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 Cheris alive today are over 60; half the Cherlys are over 57. That is 3 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Cheri Cherly
France 1255

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: Cheri and Cherly.