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Cherie vs Cheryl

American parents have registered 440,517 Cheryls since 1880, against 29,995 Cheries. Cheryl is still ahead, with 32 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Cherie 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 115 years in which either name was published, Cheryl for 102 years and Cherie for 13 years. The lead changed hands 8 times.

Side by side

  Cherie Cheryl
Total US births 29,995440,517
Most in one year 1,00224,178
Babies in 2025 1232
Estimated living today 25,000361,000
Median age today 5766
Peak year 19701958
Best rank 290th girls13th girls
Rank in 2025 8,362nd4,352nd
First recorded 19101909
Girls / boys 29,969 / 26439,539 / 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 Cheries are over 57. 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 Cherie Cheryl
Scotland 2103,638
New Zealand 1,0641,781
France 45835
England and Wales 268400
Ireland 16385

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: Cherie and Cheryl.