Cheri
Feminine · “darling”
Cheri is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 36,068 girls against 12 boys since 1880.
Cheri is the French chérie with its ending trimmed — darling, in a spelling that keeps the French look and drops the French grammar.
How old is the name Cheri?
Cheri first appears in US birth records in 1925 — 100 years ago. The typical Cheri alive today was born around 1964, making them about 61 years old. About 31,500 people named Cheri are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Cheri most popular?
Cheri peaked in 1967, reaching #225 nationally. Today it ranks #13208, 12,983 places below that high. See the whole 1967 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From carus to Cheri
The story of Cheri
French words carried a particular polish in mid-century American naming, and terms of endearment were among the ones borrowed: Cheri, Cherie, Chere, Sheree. Cheri is the shortest of them and appears in American registers from the 1940s, rising with Cheryl and Sherry — which share its sound-world without sharing its origin — and peaking in the mid-1960s.
Meaning
darling, beloved
From the French chéri and chérie, the past participle of chérir, 'to cherish', from the Latin carus, 'dear'. The masculine and feminine differ only in the final e, which this spelling removes — so the name reads as the masculine form in French, though English use does not follow that.
How the name formed
- carus
- chérir
- chérie
- Cheri
Related forms: Chérie · Sherry · Sheree
Pronouncing Cheri
SHER-ee
Two syllables, stress on the first, in American use. French stresses the second — sheh-REE — and some families follow that.
Nicknames for Cheri
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
- 1925
- Most girls named
- 19601,410 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #225reached in 1967
- Change vs 2023
- −14.3%6 in 2025, from 7
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.
Cheri in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Chérie in French — related form
- Sherry in English — related form
- Sheree in English — spelling variant
Cheris among us
people named Cheri are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 267,878 born in 2025 was named Cheri
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Cheri
- #13208
- Cheri on the 2025 chart
- #912
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Cheri went to 6 girls in 2025, but Cherry is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 48, which makes it the 912th most-given girls’ name of the year — 12,296 places above the chart.
- Cherry42
- Cheri6
About 1 girl in 33,485 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 267,878 for Cheri itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Eleanore test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Cheri's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Eleanore climbed just as high around 1916, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Eleanore's path sketches the road Cheri is walking now.
Cheri 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
Cheri beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Cheri in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The meaning is transparent, warm and needs no explanation to anyone who has met the word.
- The shortest and cleanest spelling of the French word used as a name.
- Soft throughout, with no hard consonants.
- The stress differs between English and French use and neither is wrong.
- It sits in a crowded family of similar-sounding names with unrelated origins.
- It is closely dated to the 1960s.
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What they receive
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Cheri
Feminine · #13208 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Cheris are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 31,500 people named Cheri are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Cheri?
- Cheri is one of 2 recorded spellings. Cherry is the more common one — 42 births in 2025 against 6 for Cheri.
- How popular is the name Cheri in 2025?
- Cheri ranks #13208 among US girl names in 2025, with 6 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Cheri?
- About 1 in every 267,878 US girls born in 2025 was named Cheri — 6 in all.
- Will my child share the name Cheri with classmates?
- Cheri will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Cheri
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
John#13208 · Vinnie#13208 · Margery#13208 · Jossie#13208 · Tressa#13208 · Erie#13208 · Bernadine#13208 · Euna#13208
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Cheri? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Cheri and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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