Boy Names Starting With C

Ranks are each name's overall position among all 2025 boy names, so the gaps between rows are real — the names in between simply start with other letters. Want a random shortlist instead? Spin C boy names in the generator, or browse the full top 100 boy names.

How common C names are

7.6% of the births in the 2025 boys' top 1,000 went to a name starting with C — 79 names in all, giving the initial the 5th-largest share among the 26 initials. At the top, Cooper ranks #27 among all 2025 boy names with 7,472 births; at the bottom, the 50th name, Colsen, ranks #566 with 523.

That 7.6% is C's births inside the 2025 top 1,000 divided by the births of all 1,000 names — the convention the reading ranks and counts guide walks through — and the 79-name count is taken at that same depth, not at the 50-name depth of the table above.

C names across the decades

Between 1955 and 2015 the number of C boy names in the top 200 went from 12 to 17, with a high of 24 in 1995 and a low of 10 in 1965. Charles (#11) led the letter in 1955; Carter (#24) led it in 2015. Cut to the same top-200 depth, the 2025 list holds 18 C names, led by Cooper at #27. 3 different names hold the lead across those snapshots: Charles, Christopher, and Carter. 3 of the 50 names on the 2025 table appear in every one of the 7 snapshot top-200 lists: Charles, Christopher, and Carlos.

C names held 4.5% of the top-200 births for boys in 1955 and 8.7% in 2015; at the same depth in 2025 the figure is 7.2%. The first-letter trends guide sets C's share beside the other 25 initials for every snapshot year from 1955 to 2015, for both sexes.

Faded and new

14 C boy names appear in at least one snapshot top 200 but not on the 2025 list of 50 above: Conner (2005, best #127 in 2005), Chad (1975–1995, best #27 in 1975), Corey (1975–1995, best #63 in 1985), Curtis (1955–1995, best #75 in 1965), Cory (1975–1995, best #81 in 1985), Chandler (1995, best #177 in 1995), Craig (1955–1985, best #46 in 1965), Carl (1955–1985, best #47 in 1955), Clinton (1975, 1985, best #154 in 1975), Chris (1955–1975, best #60 in 1965), Clifford (1955–1975, best #118 in 1955), Clifton (1975, best #186 in 1975), Clarence (1955, 1965, best #117 in 1955), and Clyde (1955, best #164 in 1955). The years in parentheses are the snapshot years whose top 200 included the name; the most recent of them to chart is Conner, in 2005.

25 newcomers run the other way — on the 2025 list, in no snapshot's top 200: the first 12 by rank are Callum (#118), Colter (#157), Callan (#190), Cohen (#225), Callahan (#227), Cade (#248), Crew (#256), Cyrus (#268), Colt (#285), Cash (#287), Colson (#311), and Cruz (#331), and the remaining 13 follow in the table above.

Both lists are bounded by the committed files — 200 ranks for each snapshot year and 50 C names for 2025, the last of them Colsen at #566 — so "faded" means absent from this year's 50, not unregistered, and "new" means absent from a 200-deep snapshot, not absent from that year's file.

Shape of the list

By the generator's length classes, the 50 names on the 2025 table split into 8 short spellings of four letters or fewer (Cole, for one), 38 medium spellings of five to seven (Cooper, for one), and 4 long spellings of eight or more (Christopher, for one). The longest spelling on the 2025 list is Christopher at 11 letters and the shortest is Cal at 3.

7 of the 50 names rank inside the 2025 top 100, 36 fall at ranks 101–500, 7 at 501–1,000, and none sit past #1,000, so every name on the list is inside the top-1,000 pool the generator's 2025 era draws from.

The 2025 girls' C list shares 3 spellings with this one — ranked separately for each sex — namely Carter (#45 for boys, #454 for girls), Cameron (#76 for boys, #487 for girls), and Charlie (#145 for boys, #133 for girls). After the C, the most common second letter on the 2025 list is a: 20 of the 50 names begin Ca-, followed by Co- (14); the list uses 8 different second letters in all.

C boy names: questions answered from the data

Other letters

Girl names for this letter: girl names starting with C.

Source: every name, rank, and count on this page comes from the U.S. Social Security Administration's national baby-names dataset (2025 data, from Social Security card applications). It is public-domain U.S. government data; names given fewer than 5 times in a year are excluded by the SSA, spelling variants are counted separately, and the data covers U.S. births only. Full caveats on the methodology page.