The name Chris is the short form of names like Christopher, Christian, or Christine. Therefore, it has different meanings and origins.
Chris is a first name for boys, occasionally also given to girls.
The name Chris isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Chris ranks 530. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 3 were named Chris. In the entire USA, approximately 160,299 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Chris. That is 0.05 % of all living Americans.
The name Chris is the short form of names like Christopher, Christian, or Christine. Therefore, it has different meanings and origins.
According to these examples,... Chris can stand for 'bearer of Christ' or 'follower of Christ'.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Chris is a staple in the country: Boys have been given the name Chris for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Chris is therefore one of only 442 boys’ names that have been given every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Chris is a very special name that peaked in popularity some time ago in the 20th century. Placed at #49 Chris easily made it into the top 100 boys' names of our SmartGenius statistics for male first names and has never been more popular than back in 1965.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Chris was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
As many as 410 babies were named Chris in the USA in 2022, ranking it at #621 on the list of the most popular boys' names for that year. However, it experienced its lowest point of popularity in 2020, when it was only ranked #628 of all male names in our SmartGenius statistics – back then only 390 boys were named Chris.
The name Chris may not be in the top rankings of the most popular boys’ names, but it is one of the few male given names, along with only 385 others, that can be found in every single state in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida and from California to New York. Of course, the name occurs more frequently in some states than in others – and Chris is apparently especially popular in New Mexico. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular men’s names here either, one in 745 men in New Mexico is called Chris. In total, that’s 1,243 people who feel addressed when the name Chris is shouted loudly across New Mexico and who ensure that their name makes it to #184 in our SmartGenius ranking of the most common male names in this nice state. If you asked all people in the entire U.S. for their first name, you would hear Chris as the answer a total of 160,299 times. This places Chris at #223 in our SmartGenius statistics for the most popular male names in the whole of the USA. This is true for all currently living people across all states and age groups – the recent popularity of the name Chris as a baby name is, of course, a bit different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter C is a frequent initial letter for boys’ names. This is because 5.2% of all common boys’ names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of boys' names, by the way, are J, A and D.
With five letters, the name Chris is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
With 5.2% of all boys' names that begin with a C, this first letter is thus much more common than the average of all letters. And which boys’ name beginning with C do you think is the most common in the US? The answer is... Charles.
If your name is Chris and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Chris, you can simply say:
Cat
Hat
Rocket
Igloo
Sun
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Chris
Chris
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
C
H
R
I
S
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
C
H
R
I
S
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Chris sounds like this:
