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Cheryn vs Chester

American parents have registered 122,302 Chesters since 1880, against 193 Cheryns. Chester is still ahead, with 107 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Cheryn against Chester, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Cheryn Chester

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

Chester has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1975, when Cheryn had 10 and Chester had 355.

Side by side

  Cheryn Chester
Total US births 193122,302
Most in one year 163,726
Babies in 2025 under 5107
Estimated living today 15033,000
Median age today 6967
Peak year 19481920
Best rank 2,491st girls55th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked1,585th
First recorded 19451880
Girls / boys 193 / 0828 / 121,474

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 Cheryns alive today are over 69; half the Chesters are over 67. That is 2 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 Cheryn Chester
France 2520

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: Cheryn and Chester.