Chaim
- Pronunciation
- [Chaim]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Crooked
- Origin
- Scottish
About the Name Chaim
Chaim is a Hebrew name meaning "life" — a plural form expressing the fullness of life — and it is one of the most cherished names in Jewish tradition, often given as an expression of blessing and vitality. Though glossed elsewhere as "crooked," the genuine and well-attested Hebrew sense is "life," and the name is pronounced with a guttural opening that gives it its distinctive, unmistakable character.
The name has been carried by figures of cultural and historical weight. Chaim Potok was an American author and rabbi, born Herman Harold Potok, whose novels brought the inner life of Orthodox and Conservative Jewish communities in twentieth-century New York to a mainstream readership. Chaim Weizmann was a Russian-born British chemist and Zionist statesman who served as the first President of Israel from 1949 until his death in 1952; he was born on November 27, 1874, in the small town of Motol.
For American boys, Chaim entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 2000 and has appeared every year since, with 7,529 births across that span. It reached its peak in 2022 at rank #607 and has held firmly in the mid-ranks, recorded at #629 in 2023 and #694 in 2024. Recorded variants include Chayim, Hayyim, Hyman, Hymen, and Manny, reflecting the many ways the name has been transliterated and adapted across Jewish communities over time.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Chaim
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Chaim by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2022 with 462 boys named Chaim (boy rank #607 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #666 for boys (411 US births). That's 59 places below its 2022 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Variant Forms
Famous People Named Chaim
2 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Chaim.
- Chaim Potok was a bestselling Jewish author and a rabbi.
- Chaim Weizmann was a Zionist leader and Israeli statesman who served as President of the Zionist Organization and later as the first President of Israel.
Looking for names like Chaim?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Chaim to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Chaim against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).