girls:
30 births since 2018
#5686 (0th percentile)
boys:
97 births since 1995
#4489 (2nd percentile)
overall:
127 births since 1995
#7612 (2nd percentile)
The name Chicago is the #7,612 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 127 recorded births since 1995. This represents the 1.6% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 1.6% of all names). For boys, it ranks #4,489 (2.1% percentile) for all time with 97 births since 1995. For girls, it ranks #5,686 (0.5% percentile) for all time with 30 births since 2018.
Chicago first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1995 (1995 for boys and 2018 for girls). Birth data for Chicago is available in 12 out of the 29 years between 1995 and 2023 (12 years for boys and 4 years for girls). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.
The name Chicago has been given predominantly to boys, with 76.4% of all recorded births being male. In 2023, 63.6% of babies named Chicago were boys.
For boys, Chicago reached its peak popularity in 2023, achieving the 1.0% percentile (ranked #902) with 8 births per million. The name was most common in 2023, with 8 births per million (ranked 1.0% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2019, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Chicago is at or near its peak popularity for boys, ranked #902 (1.0% percentile) with 8 births per million.
For girls, Chicago reached its peak popularity in 2022, achieving the 0.5% percentile (ranked #953) with 6 births per million. The name was most common in 2022, with 6 births per million (ranked 0.5% percentile). In recent years, the popularity of this name for girls has remained relatively stable. Currently, Chicago ranks #944 for girls (0.3% percentile) with 5 births per million, which is 82.0% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Chicago".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Chicago.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Chicago", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Chicago.
Our model has identified 4 different pronunciations for the name Chicago. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 66.7% confident that Chicago is pronounced as shih-KAH-goh, which has 3 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is shuh-KAH-goh, at 17.9% confidence, with 3 syllables.
If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Chicago? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Chicago. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Chicago, please vote using the thumbs up button.
Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.
For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.
The raw pronunciations shown (like SH IH0 K AA1 G OW0) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.
Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.
© 2025 NamePlay.org
Made with ❤️ by Aaron J Becker