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Chantel vs Charlie

American parents have registered 224,639 Charlies since 1880, against 14,997 Chantels. Charlie is still ahead, with 4,620 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Chantel 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

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Charlie for 141 years and Chantel for 5 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Chantel Charlie
Total US births 14,997224,639
Most in one year 7404,620
Babies in 2025 144,620
Estimated living today 15,000117,000
Median age today 3617
Peak year 19901919
Best rank 360th girls66th boys
Rank in 2025 7,491st145th
First recorded 19571880
Girls / boys 14,986 / 1140,359 / 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.

Which name is older

Half of the Chantels alive today are over 36; half the Charlies are over 17. That is 19 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

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 Chantel Charlie
England and Wales 671114,450
Ireland 1037,453
Scotland 626,596
Northern Ireland 183,923

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: Chantel and Charlie.