Humanverse

Sherley vs Sherry

American parents have registered 230,913 Sherrys since 1880, against 1,502 Sherleys. Sherry is still ahead, with 23 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Sherley against Sherry, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Sherley Sherry

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, Sherry for 110 years and Sherley for 5 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Sherley Sherry
Total US births 1,502230,913
Most in one year 379,261
Babies in 2025 under 523
Estimated living today 870190,000
Median age today 4863
Peak year 19471962
Best rank 1,752nd girls48th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked5,410th
First recorded 19101909
Girls / boys 1,238 / 264229,937 / 976

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 Sherrys alive today are over 63; half the Sherleys are over 48. That is 15 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 Sherley Sherry
France 74550

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: Sherley and Sherry.