Chad
Chad is a boy's name that peaked in 1972, when it was the 25th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 1,699th. About 222,000 Chads are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 46.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Chad boys named Chad
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 241,767
- Estimated living today
- 222,000
- Median age today
- 46
- Peak year
- 1972
- Best rank
- 25th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,699th
- First recorded
- 1914
- Girls / boys
- 1,039 / 240,728
How old the living Chads are
born that year still alive today
Of the 241,767 babies given the name since 1914, about 222,000 are alive — 92 in every hundred. Roughly 5,100 of them are children and 1,700 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1979 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Old English
From Middle English Chadde, from Old English Ċeadda, of obscure meaning; name of a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon saint, revived in the 20th century.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Chads
- Chad Michael Murray (born 1981)American actor
- Chad McQueen (1960–2024)American actor and racecar driver
- Chad Hurley (born 1977)American businessman, co-founder of YouTube
- Chad Smith (born 1961)American drummer
- Chad Kroeger (born 1974)Canadian rock musician
- Chad le Clos (born 1992)South African swimmer
- Chad Coleman (born 1974)American actor
- Chad Stahelski (born 1968)American stuntman and film director
People named Chad with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Chad is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Chad is most concentrated in North Dakota (2.7×), South Dakota (2.7×), Iowa (2.5×), Hawaii (2.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1972
The most popular boys’ names the year Chad peaked:
Chad elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Chad | 1,161 | 248th |
| France boys | Chad | 540 | 983rd |
| Scotland boys | Chad | 51 | 264th |
| Ireland boys | Chad | 20 | 312th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Chad | 15 | 243rd |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Chad among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Chad | — | 6 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Chad against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.