Humanverse

Chelsea vs Cherry

American parents have registered 163,335 Chelseas since 1880, against 11,716 Cherrys. Chelsea is still ahead, with 319 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Chelsea against Cherry, 1880 to 2025 0 5k 10k 15k 20k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Chelsea Cherry

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 144 years in which either name was published, Cherry for 87 years and Chelsea for 57 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Chelsea Cherry
Total US births 163,33511,716
Most in one year 16,199359
Babies in 2025 31942
Estimated living today 160,0008,200
Median age today 3363
Peak year 19921947
Best rank 15th girls434th girls
Rank in 2025 851st3,577th
First recorded 19101880
Girls / boys 162,884 / 45111,580 / 136

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 Cherrys alive today are over 63; half the Chelseas are over 33. That is 30 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 Chelsea Cherry
England and Wales 13,084844
France 2,56015
Scotland 2,24026

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: Chelsea and Cherry.