Cheyenne
Cheyenne reached its high-water mark in 1996 at number 68, and has been recorded 73,428 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 920th. About 72,000 Cheyennes are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 26.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Cheyenne boys named Cheyenne
Girls and boys called Cheyenne
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Cheyenne crossed from boys to girls in 1974, and has stayed there for 52 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 100% girls, which is roughly where it still is.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 66 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
- 73,428
- Estimated living today
- 72,000
- Median age today
- 26
- Peak year
- 1996
- Best rank
- 68th
- Rank in 2025
- 920th
- First recorded
- 1946
- Girls / boys
- 70,732 / 2,696
How old the living Cheyennes are
born that year still alive today
Of the 73,428 babies given the name since 1946, about 72,000 are alive — 98 in every hundred. Roughly 16,000 of them are children and 300 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1999 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
from dak šahíyena, from dak šaia (“to speak incoherently”), from dak ša (“red”) and dak ya (“to speak”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Cheyennes
- Cheyenne Jackson (born 1975)American actor and singer
- Cheyenne Kimball (born 1990)American singer-songwriter, guitarist, mandolinist
- Cheyenne Brando (1970–1995)Tahitian model and the daughter of Marlon Brando
People named Cheyenne with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Cheyenne is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Cheyenne is most concentrated in Alaska (2.4×), Nevada (2.2×), New Mexico (2.0×), Arizona (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1996
The most popular girls’ names the year Cheyenne peaked:
Cheyenne elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Cheyenne | 2,565 | 260th |
| England and Wales girls | Cheyenne | 1,117 | 342nd |
| Belgium girls | Cheyenne | 635 | 162nd |
| New Zealand girls | Cheyenne | 345 | 63rd |
| Scotland girls | Cheyenne | 50 | 325th |
| Ireland girls | Cheyenne | 42 | 394th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Cheyenne | 13 | 284th |
| England and Wales boys | Cheyenne | 11 | 2,419th |
| France boys | Cheyenne | 10 | 3,889th |
| Poland girls | Cheyenne | 2 birth registrations | 734th |
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.
Cheyenne: rank by region
In 2012, Cheyenne was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Cheyenne | 542 | 5 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Cheyenne among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Cheyenne | 2,468 | 3,286 |
| the Netherlands boys | Cheyenne | 18 | 47 |
| Finland girls | Cheyenne | 6 | 13 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Cheyenne 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.