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Chester vs Cheyenne

American parents have registered 122,302 Chesters since 1880, against 73,428 Cheyennes. But in 2025 it was Cheyenne that was commoner, 285 babies to 107.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Chester against Cheyenne, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Chester Cheyenne

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 146 years in which either name was published, Chester for 106 years and Cheyenne for 40 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Chester Cheyenne
Total US births 122,30273,428
Most in one year 3,7264,975
Babies in 2025 107285
Estimated living today 33,00072,000
Median age today 6726
Peak year 19201996
Best rank 55th boys68th girls
Rank in 2025 1,585th920th
First recorded 18801946
Girls / boys 828 / 121,47470,732 / 2,696

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 Chesters alive today are over 67; half the Cheyennes are over 26. That is 41 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 Chester Cheyenne
England and Wales 6,2501,128
France 202,575
Scotland 11150
Ireland 1542
Northern Ireland 3413

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: Chester and Cheyenne.