Chance
Chance is a boy's name that peaked in 1996, when it was the 154th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 442nd. About 55,000 Chances are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 21.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Chance boys named Chance
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 56,010
- Estimated living today
- 55,000
- Median age today
- 21
- Peak year
- 1996
- Best rank
- 154th
- Rank in 2025
- 442nd
- First recorded
- 1883
- Girls / boys
- 1,388 / 54,622
How old the living Chances are
born that year still alive today
Of the 56,010 babies given the name since 1883, about 55,000 are alive — 98 in every hundred. Roughly 23,000 of them are children and 30 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2004 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 English
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Chances
- Chance the Rapper (born 1993)American rapper, singer and record producer
- Chance Perdomo (1996–2024)British actor
- Chance M. Vought (1890–1930)American aviation pioneer
People named Chance with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Chance is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Chance is most concentrated in Nevada (3.1×), Wyoming (2.6×), Montana (2.5×), Oklahoma (2.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1996
The most popular boys’ names the year Chance peaked:
Chance elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Chance | 519 | 878th |
| France boys | Chance | 115 | 2,442nd |
| England and Wales girls | Chance | 62 | 3,681st |
| France girls | Chance | 55 | 4,061st |
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
Chance 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.