Christa
Christa reached its high-water mark in 1986 at number 178, and has been recorded 32,870 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 6,546th. About 31,000 Christas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 44.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Christa boys named Christa
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 32,870
- Estimated living today
- 31,000
- Median age today
- 44
- Peak year
- 1986
- Best rank
- 178th
- Rank in 2025
- 6,546th
- First recorded
- 1912
- Girls / boys
- 32,843 / 27
How old the living Christas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 32,870 babies given the name since 1912, about 31,000 are alive — 94 in every hundred. Roughly 1,100 of them are children and 1,500 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1981 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
Origin Ancient Greek
Contraction of Christina and Christiana. Rare until the second half of the 20th century, reinforced by the German Christa.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Christas
- Christa Wolf (1929–2011)German novelist and essayist
- Christa McAuliffe (1948–1986)American educator and astronaut
- Christa Ludwig (1928–2021)German mezzo-soprano
- Christa Deguchi (born 1995)Japanese Canadian judoka
- Christa B. Allen (born 1991)American actress
- Christa Luding (born 1959)German cyclist and speed skater
- Christa Miller (born 1964)American actress
- Christa Stubnick (1933–2021)East German sprinter
People named Christa with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Christa is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Christa is most concentrated in Ohio (1.4×), Indiana (1.3×), Florida (1.3×), Missouri (1.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1986
The most popular girls’ names the year Christa peaked:
Christa elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Christa | 1,125 | 381st |
| England and Wales girls | Christa | 161 | 1,815th |
| Ireland girls | Christa | 3 | 518th |
| Scotland girls | Christa | 3 | 582nd |
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.
Christa 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 | Christa | 2,006 | 3,119 |
| Finland girls | Christa | 530 | 690 |
| the Netherlands boys | Christa | — | 15 |
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
Christa 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.