Chaim
Masculine · Hebrew roots · “life”
Chaim is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 12,072 boys against 6 girls since 1880.
Chaim is the Hebrew word for life, worn as a name — the same chayyim you hear in l'chaim and in etz chayim, the tree of life. It has been spoken in Jewish homes for centuries, crossed the Atlantic with Yiddish-speaking families, and stayed close to its original sound rather than smoothing out into English. Short on the page, guttural at the front, warm in the middle.
How old is the name Chaim?
Chaim first appears in US birth records in 1942 — 83 years ago. The typical Chaim alive today was born around 2008, making them about 17 years old. About 11,500 people named Chaim are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Chaim most popular?
Chaim peaked in 2022, reaching #607 nationally. Today it ranks #666, 59 places below that high. See the whole 2022 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Chayyim (Hebrew) to Chaim
The story of Chaim
The root is the Hebrew noun chayyim, "life," a common word in the Hebrew Bible long before it was anyone's name. It came into use as a personal name among Jews in medieval Europe and around the Mediterranean, taking the form Haim in Sephardi communities and Chaim among Ashkenazim, where Yiddish carried it for generations. There is a documented Ashkenazi custom of adding Chaim to the name of someone gravely ill, so the name has a long association with blessing and recovery. It reached the United States with Yiddish-speaking immigration and is still concentrated in the Northeast, where Orthodox communities have kept it in unbroken use rather than in and out of fashion.
Meaning
life
From Hebrew chayyim, which is grammatically plural — the word for life comes in that form in Hebrew, as in the toast l'chaim, "to life."
How the name formed
- ChayyimHebrew
- HaimSephardi
- ChaimAshkenazi/Yiddish
- HymanEnglish anglicization
Related forms: Chayyim / Hayyim · Haim · Hyman · Chayim · Chaya
Pronouncing Chaim
KHY-im
The opening ch is the guttural sound of Bach or challah, not the ch of chair. Many American English speakers say HY-im instead, and both are heard. It is two syllables, never rhyming with "time."
Nicknames for Chaim
High
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1942
- Most boys named
- 2022462 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #607reached in 2022
- Change vs 2023
- −7.4%411 in 2025, from 444
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Chaim in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Chayyim / Hayyim in Hebrew — transliteration
- Haim in Modern Israeli Hebrew — spelling variant
- Hyman in English — related form
- Chayim in Yiddish — spelling variant
- Chaya in Hebrew (feminine) — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: New York, New Jersey, Maryland.
Chaims among us
people named Chaim are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 4,156 born in 2025 was named Chaim
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Lawerence test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Chaim's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Lawerence climbed just as high around 1949, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Lawerence's path sketches the road Chaim is walking now.
Chaim sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Chaim is headed
Chaim should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Chaim beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Chaim in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The meaning is settled and can be stated in one word — life — which is unusual clarity for a name this old.
- Centuries of unbroken use in Jewish communities, with no gap where the name fell out of the record.
- Four letters, one spelling that is standard in English-language use, and no competing modern respellings to choose between.
- Recognizable across Hebrew, Yiddish and English, with Haim as a familiar near-twin in Israel.
- Real diminutives already exist in Yiddish, so the short forms do not have to be invented.
- The initial sound has no English equivalent. Outside communities that know the name, expect it to be read as "chame" or "chime," and expect to correct it more than once.
- The spelling and the pronunciation pull in different directions for English readers, so the name will often be said one way and written another until people learn it.
- Chaim reads as distinctly Jewish, and specifically Ashkenazi. That is the point of the name for many families, but it is worth naming as a fact about how it will be received.
- The old anglicization Hymie was used as an ethnic slur in the twentieth century, which is one reason the full form has held up better than the English nicknames.
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What they receive
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Chaim
Masculine · Hebrew roots · #666 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Chaims are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 11,500 people named Chaim are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Chaim in 2025?
- Chaim ranks #666 among US boy names in 2025, with 411 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Chaim?
- About 1 in every 4,156 US boys born in 2025 was named Chaim — 411 in all.
- Will my child share the name Chaim with classmates?
- Chaim will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Chaim
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Jaxton#667 · Davis#668 · Major#669 · Mauricio#663 · Wylder#669 · Creed#663 · Ahmad#669 · Yosef#663
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Chaim? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Chaim and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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