Chancellor
Masculine · “doorkeeper at the lattice”
Chancellor is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 2,643 boys against 5 girls since 1880.
Chancellor names a doorkeeper — the Roman official who stood at the lattice screen separating the court from the public.
How old is the name Chancellor?
Chancellor first appears in US birth records in 1916 — 109 years ago. The typical Chancellor alive today was born around 2003, making them about 22 years old. About 2,600 people named Chancellor are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Chancellor most popular?
Chancellor peaked in 2001, reaching #1089 nationally. Today it ranks #4396, 3,307 places below that high. See the whole 2001 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From cancelli to Chancellor
The story of Chancellor
The cancellarius began as a court usher and rose to become the head of government in half of Europe — because the man who controlled access to the ruler and kept the records ended up running things. The lattice also gives cancel: to strike out a document with crossed lines. A German chancellor and a British Chancellor of the Exchequer are both, at bottom, doorkeepers.
Meaning
doorkeeper at the lattice
From Latin cancellarius, an usher stationed at the cancelli, the lattice or bars that fenced off a Roman court; the same word gives cancel, which originally meant to cross out with lattice-shaped lines.
How the name formed
- cancelli
- cancellarius
- chancellor
Related forms: Kanzler · Canciller · Chancelier
Pronouncing Chancellor
CHAN-suh-ler
Three syllables, first stressed. There is no variation in English.
Nicknames for Chancellor
Moderate
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
- 1916
- Most boys named
- 2001131 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1089reached in 2001
- Change vs 2024
- −11.5%23 in 2025, from 26
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.
Chancellor in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Kanzler in German — related form
- Canciller in Spanish — related form
- Chancelier in French — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, Georgia, North Carolina.
Chancellors among us
people named Chancellor are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 74,264 born in 2025 was named Chancellor
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 Christos test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Chancellor's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Christos climbed just as high around 1979, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Christos's path sketches the road Chancellor is walking now.
Chancellor 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
Chancellor beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Chancellor in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A settled meaning with a genuinely excellent piece of institutional history.
- Chance is a complete short form in current use.
- Read correctly on sight by every English speaker.
- Ten letters and three syllables is a great deal for early handwriting.
- It names a high office, which strangers will remark on.
- It reads as a title rather than a name in most settings.
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What they receive
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Chancellor
Masculine · #4396 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Chancellors are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 2,600 people named Chancellor are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Chancellor in 2025?
- Chancellor ranks #4396 among US boy names in 2025, with 23 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Chancellor?
- About 1 in every 74,264 US boys born in 2025 was named Chancellor — 23 in all.
- Will my child share the name Chancellor with classmates?
- Chancellor will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Chancellor
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Odell#4396 · Corwin#4396 · Tennyson#4396 · Marques#4396 · Manu#4396 · Omid#4396 · Zackariah#4396 · Burton#4396
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Chancellor? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Chancellor and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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