Charley
The boy's name Charley has been in the national records since 1880, with 35,321 births to its name. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 1,826th. About 17,000 Charleys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 14.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Charley boys named Charley
Girls and boys called Charley
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Charley crossed from boys to girls in 1987, and has stayed there for 39 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 89% girls, and in 2025 it was 80%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 146 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
- 35,321
- Estimated living today
- 17,000
- Median age today
- 14
- Peak year
- 1920
- Best rank
- 249th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,826th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 11,347 / 23,974
How old the living Charleys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 35,321 babies given the name since 1880, about 17,000 are alive — 49 in every hundred. Roughly 10,000 of them are children and 2,400 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2011 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 Charleys
- Charley Patton (1891–1934)American Delta blues musician
- Charley Paddock (1900–1943)American athlete and Olympic gold medalist
- Charley Pride (1934–2020)American country musician
- Charley Chase (1893–1940)actor, comedian, director, writer
- Charley Toorop (1891–1955)Dutch painter
- Charley Grapewin (1869–1956)American actor
- Charley Borah (1906–1980)American athlete
- Charley Boorman (born 1966)British actor and adventurer
People named Charley with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Charley is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Charley is most concentrated in Oklahoma (5.2×), Arkansas (5.0×), Mississippi (4.1×), Louisiana (3.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1920
The most popular boys’ names the year Charley peaked:
Charley elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Charley | 4,546 | 146th |
| England and Wales boys | Charley | 1,839 | 326th |
| France boys | Charley | 1,125 | 521st |
| Scotland girls | Charley | 816 | 92nd |
| Ireland girls | Charley | 236 | 276th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Charley | 193 | 115th |
| France girls | Charley | 120 | 1,761st |
| Ireland boys | Charley | 50 | 435th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Charley | 40 | 232nd |
| Scotland boys | Charley | 35 | 326th |
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
Charley 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.