Humanverse

Chimamanda vs Chiquita

American parents have registered 6,225 Chiquitas since 1880, against 541 Chimamandas. But in 2025 it was Chimamanda that was commoner, 28 babies to fewer than five.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Chimamanda against Chiquita, 1880 to 2025 0 100 200 300 400 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Chimamanda Chiquita

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 95 years in which either name was published, Chiquita for 77 years and Chimamanda for 18 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Chimamanda Chiquita
Total US births 5416,225
Most in one year 60373
Babies in 2025 28under 5
Estimated living today 5405,700
Median age today 745
Peak year 20181985
Best rank 2,810th girls532nd girls
Rank in 2025 4,758thunranked
First recorded 20081917
Girls / boys 541 / 06,219 / 6

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 Chiquitas alive today are over 45; half the Chimamandas are over 7. That is 38 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 Chimamanda Chiquita
England and Wales 40514

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: Chimamanda and Chiquita.