Charity: Meaning of Baby Name Charity

About the Name Charity

Charity is an English virtue name drawn directly from the Latin caritas, meaning "benevolent goodwill, love, and generous care for others" — the same root that gives us the English word charitable and the theological concept of charity as the highest of the three theological virtues. In Christian tradition, caritas was the Latin rendering of the Greek agape, the selfless, unconditional love described in Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, and the name was adopted by Puritan and early Protestant naming traditions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as part of a broader practice of giving children virtue names such as Hope, Faith, and Grace.

Charity first appeared in the US Social Security top-1000 in 2000 — also its peak year, reaching #456 — and remained on the chart through 2013, last appearing at #965 with 261 births, accumulating 5,913 total top-1000 births over its fourteen-year run. Mid-career figures show a consistent gentle decline: 310 births at #848 in 2011 and 276 births at #928 in 2012. The name's chart life in this window reflects a niche but loyal constituency among religiously inclined families who value its explicit virtue meaning.

Charity carries perhaps more semantic weight than almost any other name in common use — every time it is spoken it invokes the concept of generous love. That directness is both its greatest appeal and the reason it has remained a distinctive rather than mainstream choice. Recorded variants include Charise and Cherry, offering softer or more casual options within the same name family for families who want the warmth without the full theological gravity of Charity itself.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Charity

5,642

English baby names in our dictionary

2,251

English female names

384

7-letter C-names in our dictionary

721

C-female names total

2000–2013

years of US SSA records (14 total)

5,913

total US births named Charity (all years)

US Popularity History (2000–2013)

📉 Falling fast: Charity dropped 175 places in the US girls ranking over the last 5 years (#790 in 2008 → #965 in 2013).

Annual US births named Charity by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2000 with 608 girls named Charity (girl rank #456 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2013, ranked #965 for girls (261 US births). That's 509 places below its 2000 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.

Where in the US Is Charity Most Popular?

Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Charity the strongest states are Alabama, Utah, Tennessee.

Strongest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Alabama	#515	29
2	Utah	#598	40
3	Tennessee	#669	44
4	Kentucky	#706	17
5	North Carolina	#791	34
6	Indiana	#828	37
7	Wisconsin	#854	15
8	Georgia	#893	67
9	Virginia	#913	30
10	Missouri	#929	32

Weakest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Missouri	#929	32
2	Virginia	#913	30
3	Georgia	#893	67
4	Wisconsin	#854	15
5	Indiana	#828	37
6	North Carolina	#791	34
7	Kentucky	#706	17
8	Tennessee	#669	44
9	Utah	#598	40
10	Alabama	#515	29

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Charity in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Charise	"Charming, Hopeful"	Female	English
Cherry	The Fruit-Bearing Cherry Tree.	Female	English

Looking for names like Charity?

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.

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Compare Charity to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Charity against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Charity vs Olivia 210,124 births since 2014

Charity vs Emma 202,477 births since 2014

Charity vs Sophia 169,709 births since 2014

Charity vs Isabella 158,431 births since 2014

Charity vs Ava 157,356 births since 2014

Charity vs Charlotte 151,872 births since 2014

Charity vs Mia 149,779 births since 2014

Charity vs Amelia 142,728 births since 2014

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