Humanverse

Christel vs Christy

American parents have registered 100,536 Christys since 1880, against 3,712 Christels. Christy is still ahead, with 34 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Christel against Christy, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Christel Christy

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

Christy has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1886 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1912, when Christel had 5 and Christy had 5.

Side by side

  Christel Christy
Total US births 3,712100,536
Most in one year 2025,192
Babies in 2025 under 534
Estimated living today 3,30092,000
Median age today 4949
Peak year 19781975
Best rank 762nd girls53rd girls
Rank in 2025 unranked4,172nd
First recorded 19121886
Girls / boys 3,712 / 098,576 / 1,960

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.

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 Christel Christy
France 21,640570
England and Wales 30518
Belgium 135

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: Christel and Christy.