Sherry
Feminine
Sherry is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 229,937 girls against 976 boys since 1880. See Sherry as a boy name
Sherry is a town in Spain that English mangled and then got the grammar wrong. Jerez became sherris in English mouths; English speakers heard a plural, dropped the s to make a singular, and invented a word that had never existed — which is exactly how a pea was cut out of pease and a cherry out of cerise.
How old is the name Sherry?
Sherry first appears in US birth records in 1909 — 116 years ago. The typical Sherry alive today was born around 1960, making them about 65 years old. About 194,000 people named Sherry are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Sherry most popular?
Sherry peaked in 1962, reaching #48 nationally. Today it ranks #5410, 5,362 places below that high. See the whole 1962 chart.
Sherry appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From the Andalusian town of Jerez and its fortified wine to Sherry
The story of Sherry
The error is called back-formation and English has done it repeatedly. Pease was a singular noun — the pease porridge of the rhyme is one substance — and speakers heard the s as a plural and produced a pea. Cerise was a single cherry in Norman French and gave English a cherry the same way. Sherris became sherry in exactly that fashion, and Shakespeare's characters are still drinking sherris-sack a generation after the mistake began. The words are now unremovable and every one of them is a grammatical accident.
Meaningnot established
Not established
As a name it may be the wine, may be Cherie or Cheryl cut short, and may be an independent coinage. All three were live in the 1950s and the record cannot distinguish them. The wine's own name is a place: the fortified wine of Jerez de la Frontera, which English has been drinking and mispronouncing since the sixteenth century.
How the name formed
- the Andalusian town of Jerez and its fortified wine
- English hears the name as sherris
- the final s is mistaken for a plural and dropped
- sherry becomes an English word and then a name
- an American peak at the start of the sixties
Related forms: Jerez · Sherri · Cherie
Pronouncing Sherry
SHERR-ee
Two syllables, stress at the front. Identical to the wine in every mouth, which is the source of most of the jokes.
Nicknames for Sherry
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
- 1909
- Most girls named
- 19639,065 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #48reached in 1962
- Change vs 2023
- +9.5%23 in 2025, from 21
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.
Sherry in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Jerez in Spanish — related form
- Sherri in English — spelling variant
- Cherie in English — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, New York, Texas.
Sherrys among us
people named Sherry are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 69,881 born in 2025 was named Sherry
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Sherry
- #5410
- Sherry on the 2025 chart
- #919
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Sherry went to 23 girls in 2025, but Sherri and Sheri are the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 41, which makes it the 919th most-given girls’ name of the year — 4,491 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 39,202 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 69,881 for Sherry 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 Juanita test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Sherry's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Juanita climbed just as high around 1924, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Juanita's path sketches the road Sherry is walking now.
Sherry 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
Sherry beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Sherry in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It is warm, short and read correctly by everybody at sight.
- It works for a child of either sex, and the record carries it on both sides.
- Sher is available and has its own currency.
- It is the name of a drink, and that will be the first association for most adults.
- Sherri, Sherrie and Cheri are all in the record and will be substituted.
- It is closely dated to the middle of the last century.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Sherry
Feminine · #5410 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Sherrys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 194,000 people named Sherry are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Sherry?
- Sherry is the most-used spelling in US records — 23 of the 41 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Sherri and Sheri.
- How popular is the name Sherry in 2025?
- Sherry ranks #5410 among US girl names in 2025, with 23 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Sherry?
- About 1 in every 69,881 US girls born in 2025 was named Sherry — 23 in all.
- Will my child share the name Sherry with classmates?
- Sherry will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Sherry
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Aina#5410 · Kathia#5410 · Taj#5410 · Analicia#5410 · Divya#5410 · Halimah#5410 · Sameera#5410 · Leo#5410
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Sherry? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Sherry and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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