Humanverse

Chaim vs Charlie

American parents have registered 224,639 Charlies since 1880, against 12,078 Chaims. Charlie is still ahead, with 4,620 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Chaim against Charlie, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Chaim Charlie

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

Charlie has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1998, when Chaim had 191 and Charlie had 627.

Side by side

  Chaim Charlie
Total US births 12,078224,639
Most in one year 4624,620
Babies in 2025 4114,620
Estimated living today 12,000117,000
Median age today 1617
Peak year 20221919
Best rank 607th boys66th boys
Rank in 2025 666th145th
First recorded 19421880
Girls / boys 6 / 12,07240,359 / 184,280

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.

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 Chaim Charlie
England and Wales 800114,450
France 170 Chaïm38,295
Belgium 1653,379
Switzerland 571,012

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: Chaim and Charlie.