How popular is the baby name Cheryl in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Cheryl.

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Popularity of the baby name Cheryl


Posts that mention the name Cheryl

What popularized the baby name Cheryl in the 1940s?

Actress Cheryl Walker in the movie "Stage Door Canteen" (1943)
Cheryl Walker in “Stage Door Canteen

It’s hard to pinpoint the origin of the name Cheryl (Cherie + Beryl? Cherry + Beryl?), but it’s clear that the name saw a drastic rise in popularity during the first half of 20th century. Cheryl went from a rarity in the early 1900s to one of the most popular girl names in the U.S. by the mid-1950s.

How did it manage to do that?

With a little help from pop culture. :)

The first pop culture boost happened in 1938:

U.S. girls named CherylCalif. girls named Cheryl
1940285 [rank: 408th]42
1939289 [rank: 390th]49
1938397 [rank: 312th]76
1937145 [rank: 563rd]16
193694 [rank: 688th]10

What was drawing attention to the name (particularly in California) around that time?

A 19-year-old from Pasadena named Cheryl Walker. In late 1937, she was selected as the 1938 Queen of the Tournament of Roses. Local newspapers (including the Los Angeles Times) talked about Cheryl quite a bit during the last month of 1937 and the first few months of 1938.

Cheryl Walker went on to work in movies for about a decade. Her biggest picture was the wartime hit Stage Door Canteen, in which she played a canteen hostess (named Eileen) who fell in love with a soldier. Released in mid-1943, Stage Door Canteen became one of the highest-grossing films of the year.

In both 1943 and 1944, the number of babies named Cheryl increased significantly:

  • 1945: 8,150 baby girls named Cheryl [rank: 32nd]
  • 1944: 7,970 baby girls named Cheryl [rank: 36th]
  • 1943: 2,878 baby girls named Cheryl [rank: 102nd]
  • 1942: 590 baby girls named Cheryl [rank: 280th]
  • 1941: 439 baby girls named Cheryl [rank: 311th]

The name of Cheryl’s character, Eileen, also saw increased usage, as did many variant spellings of Cheryl:

19421943194419451946
Cheryl5902,8787,9708,15011,525
Sheryl3245889491,0551,632
Sherrill202207263206250
Cheryle2780176184238
Sherryl4971104140203
Cheryll11416998120
Sheryle1219263152
Cherryl9195958104
Sharelle28*10
Charyl24*271721
Scheryl11*1175
Cherril667
Sherral668
Sherelle6*
Sheril51169
Chyrl5*8710
Cheril6*7
Cherl6*58
Sherryll565
Cherill5*
Cheyrl5*59
Chyrel7*10
Cheryal6*5
Cherryle5*
Sherell5*
Sherrille5*
Chryl9*
Sherryle7*
Cherel5*
Cherle5*
Cherryll5*
Chyral5*
Shyrel5*
*Debut

But the skyrocketing interest in the name Cheryl was due to more than a movie.

A few weeks after the film was released, Hollywood star Lana Turner and her husband Stephen Crane welcomed a daughter they decided to call Cheryl Christina Crane. (Lana said the name “Cheryl” came to her in a dream.)

Stephen Crane, Lana Turner, and baby Cheryl Crane (in mid-1943)
Stephen Crane, Lana Turner, and Cheryl

Baby Cheryl was often mentioned in the news — particularly during 1944, when she was at the center of a custody battle that lasted from April until August.

Usage of the name Cheryl plateaued in the late ’40s and early ’50s, then began to rise again in 1954:

  • 1956: 21,280 baby girls named Cheryl [rank: 18th]
  • 1955: 19,100 baby girls named Cheryl [rank: 19th]
  • 1954: 15,000 baby girls named Cheryl [rank: 22nd]
  • 1953: 12,271 baby girls named Cheryl [rank: 28th]
  • 1952: 12,197 baby girls named Cheryl [rank: 31st]

Why?

Likely because of the short-lived TV show called Waterfront (1954-1956). The central character, John Herrick, was the captain of a San Pedro Harbor tugboat called the “Cheryl Ann.” The show also gave a boost to the compound names Cherylann, Cherylanne and Sherylann specifically.

The rise continued with the help of Mouseketeer Cheryl Holdridge (b. 1944), who was featured on the immensely popular children’s TV series The Mickey Mouse Club from 1956 to 1958.

Graph of the usage of the baby name Cheryl in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Cheryl

The name Cheryl reached peak popularity in 1958 — which just so happens to be the year that Lana Turner’s daughter Cheryl (now age 14) was back in the headlines, this time for killing her mother’s abusive boyfriend (a gangster named Johnny Stompanato).

After that, usage of the name began to decline. Cheryl fell out of the top 20 in 1962, then out of the top 50 in 1972.

It saw a minor resurgence at the end of the 1970s — thanks to actress Cheryl Ladd, singer Cheryl Lynn, and/or model Cheryl Tiegs — but was out of the top 100 by 1980.

  • 1980: 2,609 baby girls named Cheryl [rank: 119th]
  • 1979: 3,210 baby girls named Cheryl [rank: 94th]
  • 1978: 3,167 baby girls named Cheryl [rank: 94th]
  • 1977: 2121 baby girls named Cheryl [rank: 134th]

And in 1998, exactly 40 years after nearly reaching the top 10, Cheryl fell out of the top 1,000 entirely.

What are your thoughts on the name Cheryl? (How about the specific spelling Cherrill?)

P.S. Thank you to all the people who’ve left helpful comments below! I’ve finally revised this post to incorporate your ideas/suggestions. :)

Sources:

Images: Screenshot of Stage Door Canteen; Cheryl Crane photo (public domain)

[Latest update: Feb. 2024]

Where did the baby name Cherrill come from in 1931?

Actress Virginia Cherrill in the movie "City Lights" (1931)
Virginia Cherrill in “City Lights

I had to follow yesterday’s post about Nydia with a post about Cherrill. Why? Because both names were inspired by fictional blind girls selling flowers. How random is that?

While Nydia came from a 19th-century book, Cherrill comes from a 20th-century film. But not just any film — one of the best romantic comedies of all time, according to those in the know.

The baby name Cherrill popped up in the SSA’s baby name data for the very first time in 1931. (This was more than a decade before the similar-sounding name Cheryl started becoming popular.)

  • 1933: 8 baby girls named Cherrill
  • 1932: 6 baby girls named Cherrill
  • 1931: 9 baby girls named Cherrill [debut]
  • 1930: unlisted
  • 1929: unlisted

The reason? Charlie Chaplin’s silent film City Lights, which was released in early 1931 and featured Hollywood newcomer Virginia Cherrill as a blind flower-seller (the romantic interest of Chaplin’s famous “Little Tramp” character).

Actors Charlie Chaplin and Virginia Cherrill in the movie "City Lights" (1931)
Scene from “City Lights

Chaplin had auditioned many young actresses before he noticed twenty-year-old Virginia Cherrill when they both sat ringside at a boxing match at the Hollywood Legion Stadium. Although a beautiful blonde, it was the manner in which she coped with her near-sightedness that earned her the role.

Despite the fact that talkies had largely replaced silent films by 1931, City Lights did extremely well at the box office.

And the film has stood the test of time. In 1991, the Library of Congress inducted City Lights into the National Film Registry. In 2008, the American Film Institute ranked City Lights the #1 romantic comedy of all time.

Virginia Cherrill, who was born in Illinois in 1908, never aspired to be a film star. (She was only visiting California when she was spotted by Chaplin.) She appeared in several more films after City Lights, but stopped acting after marrying actor Cary Grant in 1934. (They divorced the next year. Grant went on to marry Barbara Hutton and become a father figure to Barbara’s son Lance.)

What do you think of the baby name Cherrill?

Sources:

Images: Screenshots of City Lights

Interesting baby name analysis

I only recently noticed that Behind the Name, one of my favorite websites for baby name definitions, has a page called United States Popularity Analysis — a “computer-created analysis of the United States top 1000 names for the period 1880 to 2012.”

The page has some interesting top ten lists. Here are three of them:

Most Volatile

Boy NamesGirl Names
1. Elvis
2. Brooks
3. Santiago
4. Lincoln
5. Ernie
6. Wyatt
7. Quincy
8. Rogers
9. Alec
10. Dexter
1. Juliet
2. Lea
3. Justine
4. Martina
5. Felicia
6. Delilah
7. Selina
8. Lonnie
9. Magdalena
10. Katy

Biggest Recoveries

Boy NamesGirl Names
1. Silas
2. Isaiah
3. Caleb
4. Emmett
5. Jordan
6. Josiah
7. Harrison
8. Ezra
9. Jason
10. Jesus
1. Ella
2. Stella
3. Sadie
4. Sophie
5. Isabella
6. Lily
7. Hannah
8. Isabelle
9. Sophia
10. Lilly

Biggest Flash-in-the-Pans

Boy NamesGirl Names
1. Dewey
2. Woodrow
3. Dale
4. Barry
5. Rick
6. Greg
7. Roosevelt
8. Shannon
9. Kim
10. Darrin
1. Debra
2. Lori
3. Tammy
4. Pamela
5. Tracy
6. Cheryl
7. Beverly
8. Dawn
9. Diane
10. Kathy

I wonder what the formulas were. I’d love to try the same analysis on the SSA’s full list, using raw numbers instead of rankings. Wonder how much overlap there’d be…

The story behind Cheryl Strayed’s surname

From the cover of the book "Wild" (2012) by Cheryl Strayed

Earlier this year, the New York Times published an article about women who created new surnames for themselves after divorce.

Hanging on to your ex’s last name can daily conjure an unhappy past, while going back to a maiden name you’ve outgrown can be difficult to imagine. Divorce can be an opportunity to create an entirely different surname that speaks to the woman you have become.

The article mentioned several women, including writer Cheryl Strayed, who has written in-depth about her surname-choosing experience.

Cheryl, who was “Sugar” of the popular Dear Sugar advice column, got divorced in her mid-20s. She talks about coming up with the surname “Strayed” in chapter 6 of her memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (which I’m in the middle of reading right now):

Cheryl Strayed, Cheryl Strayed, Cheryl Strayed–those two words together still rolled somewhat hesitantly off my tongue. Cheryl had been my name forever, but Strayed was a new addition–only officially my name since April, when Paul and I had filed for divorce.

[…]

[I]n the months that Paul and I hung in marital limbo, unsure of which direct we’d move in, I pondered the question of my last name, mentally scanning words that sounded good with Cheryl and making lists of characters from novels I admired. Nothing fit until one day when the word strayed came into my mind. Immediately, I looked it up in the dictionary and knew it was mine. Its layered definitions spoke directly to my life and also struck a poetic chord: to wander from the proper path, to deviate from the direct course, to be lost, to become wild, to be without a mother or father, to be without a home, to move about aimlessly in search of something, to diverge or digress.

[…]

Cheryl Strayed I wrote down repeatedly down a whole page of my journal, like a girl with a crush on a boy she hopes to marry. Only the boy didn’t exist. I was my own boy, planting a root in the center of my rootlessness. Still, I had my doubts. To pick a word out of the dictionary and proclaim it mine felt a bit fraudulent to me, a bit childish or foolish, not to mention a touch hypocritical. For years I’d privately mocked the peers in my hippy, artsy, lefty circles who’d taken on names they’d invented for themselves. Jennifers and Michelles who became Sequoias and Lunas; Mikes and Jasons who became Oaks and Thistles. I pressed on anyway, confiding in a few friends about my decision, asking them to begin calling me by my new name to help me test it out. I took a road trip and each time I happened across a guest book I signed it Cheryl Strayed, my hand trembling slightly, feeling vaguely guilty, as if I were forging a check.

By the time Paul and I decided to file our divorce papers, I’d broken in my new name enough that I wrote it without hesitation on the blank line.

P.S. Cheryl’s son Carver was named after short story writer Raymond Carver.

Source: Wood, Megan L. “When the New You Carries a Fresh Identity, Too.” New York Times 15 Feb. 2013. (h/t A Mitchell)

Image: Cover of Wild