Chase
- Pronunciation
- [Chase]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Huntsman.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Chase
Chase descends from the Old French chace (hunt, pursuit), entering medieval English as both an occupational surname (a chaser, hunter) and a place-name surname (a person who lived near a chase, a fenced area for hunting deer). The surname appears in English records continuously since the 13th century. As a personal name, Chase is essentially a modern American invention — SSA records show essentially no baby Chases before 1960.
The name's American emergence accelerated through the 1980s and 1990s, riding the broader surname-as-given-name trend that includes Cooper, Carter, and Hunter. Notable American Chase bearers as a surname include Salmon P. Chase (1808–1873), US Treasury Secretary under Lincoln and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (the JPMorgan Chase bank takes its name through him); contemporary American actor Chevy Chase (born Cornelius Crane Chase, 1943); and 19th-century painter William Merritt Chase.
The first-name surge took Chase from outside the US top 500 in 1980 to the top 75 boys' rank by 2003 and has held a top-100 range since. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the surname-style heritage, the inherent action-and-pursuit register of the word's meaning, and the distinctive single-syllable hard-consonant structure. The name reads as decisive, energetic, and modern — qualities valued in current American naming. Notable contemporary bearers include American actor Chase Crawford (Gossip Girl), country singer Chase Rice, and various sports figures. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Chasey and the rare CC each occasionally appear. There are no significant international variants since the name's first-name use is essentially American.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Chase
US Popularity History (1995–2025)
Annual US births named Chase by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2009 with 7,393 boys named Chase (boy rank #61 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #192 for boys (1,904 US births). That's 131 places below its 2009 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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Where in the US Is Chase Most Popular?
Average boy-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 boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Chase the strongest states are Delaware, Vermont, Pennsylvania.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Delaware | #55 | 170 |
| 2 | Vermont | #61 | 48 |
| 3 | Pennsylvania | #65 | 1,947 |
| 4 | Maryland | #66 | 871 |
| 5 | Connecticut | #66 | 506 |
| 6 | New Jersey | #69 | 1,239 |
| 7 | Maine | #78 | 157 |
| 8 | New York | #85 | 2,161 |
| 9 | District of Columbia | #88 | 132 |
| 10 | New Hampshire | #88 | 159 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oklahoma | #286 | 191 |
| 2 | Texas | #275 | 1,345 |
| 3 | New Mexico | #257 | 77 |
| 4 | Utah | #238 | 206 |
| 5 | Washington | #228 | 363 |
| 6 | Idaho | #221 | 85 |
| 7 | Oregon | #212 | 196 |
| 8 | Arizona | #205 | 397 |
| 9 | Kansas | #205 | 224 |
| 10 | California | #205 | 1,964 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Chase in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Chase?
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 Chase to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Chase against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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