Cher
1,721 US births on record
Cher in the United States
Between 1999 and 2024 the name has been falling — down 45% as a share of girls' births.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Cher in New Zealand
Cher never reached 10 births in a single year in New Zealand, so it does not appear in the DIA file. That is a reporting floor, not a zero — the name may still have been registered here, just never ten times in one year.
SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Decade by decade in the US
| Year | Rank | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1950 | #3,423 | 10 |
| 1960 | #2,246 | 27 |
| 1970 | #1,430 | 72 |
| 1980 | #3,215 | 26 |
| 1990 | #4,868 | 19 |
| 2000 | #7,158 | 14 |
| 2010 | below floor | — |
| 2020 | #11,090 | 8 |
Where in the United States
The states that registered Cher most often since 1948. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.
| State | Births |
|---|---|
| California | 181 |
| New York | 55 |
| Pennsylvania | 48 |
| Ohio | 44 |
| Texas | 38 |
| Florida | 37 |
| Louisiana | 34 |
| Illinois | 28 |
| Indiana | 16 |
| Michigan | 14 |
How these figures are worked out
- Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site.
- Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
- The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
- Each country hides small numbers — the US below 5 births a year, New Zealand below 10. A gap in a line is "below the floor", never "nobody".
SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026