Chaka
Chaka reached its high-water mark in 1976 at number 897, and has been recorded 1,103 times in all. It is given to both boys and girls. It has not appeared in the national data since 2001. About 1,000 Chakas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 47.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Chaka boys named Chaka
Girls and boys called Chaka
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Chaka crossed from boys to girls in 1975, and has stayed there for 11 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 100% girls, which is roughly where it still is.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 13 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,103
- Estimated living today
- 1,000
- Median age today
- 47
- Peak year
- 1976
- Best rank
- 897th
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1968
- Girls / boys
- 841 / 262
How old the living Chakas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,103 babies given the name since 1968, about 1,000 are alive — 95 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1978 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.
Notable Chakas
- Chaka Khan (born 1953)American singer
- Chaka Fattah (born 1956)American politician
People named Chaka with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Chaka is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Chaka is most concentrated in Georgia (7.6×), Louisiana (2.8×), Tennessee (2.4×), Texas (2.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1976
The most popular girls’ names the year Chaka peaked:
Chaka elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Chaka | 15 | 4,219th |
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.
Related names
Chaka 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.