Name Awesome

Chiyo

Girls' name

Japanese name; meaning depends on kanji

Chiyo has been given to 135 babies in the U.S. since 1914. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1917, with 12 recorded.

Babies named Chiyo, 2019

1 in 694,000

Chiyo over time, 1880–2025

Girls
05101518801900192019401960198020002020

Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Chiyo: meaning, origin, and history

Japanese name; meaning depends on kanji

Japanese

What Chiyo means

Chiyo is documented with more than one possible Japanese character combination. The Latin-letter spelling records a pronunciation; it does not specify one unique kanji spelling or one universal meaning.

Possible character meanings include thousand, generation, world.

Documented naming usage and pronunciation

Chiyo is used in Japanese.

Another recorded pronunciation is /t͡ɕi.jo̞/ for Chiyo.

Origin, language, and formation

Chiyo is used in English and French. Its origins include Japanese.

Pronunciation and spelling

In French, Chiyo is pronounced /tʃi.jo/.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 135 girls were recorded with the name Chiyo between 1914 and 2019. Its highest annual count was 12 in 1917; its best national rank was #2,582 in 1917.

Sources & methodologyReferences, data & attribution

Meaning, origin, and language notes draw on the references below.

American popularity figures use published Social Security Administration records for this exact spelling. Counts below five for a name, sex, and year are omitted.

Wiktionary material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

How common is Chiyo?

Chiyo had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2019, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 2019
1 in 694,000
5 of 3,472,229 births
Among girls only
1 in 336,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 2019
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
481,354 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Chiyo sits on the popularity scale

Rarest published (5 a year)#1 — Olivia (13,544)

Chance at least one other child shares the name

If the other children were drawn at random from the 2019 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.

Class of 20Under 1%
Class of 30Under 1%
Grade of 100Under 1%
School of 500Under 1%

Put another way: gather 481,354 children born in 2019 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Chiyo. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Chiyos were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Chiyo was born before 1921 — so the typical Chiyo is around 104 today.

Median birth year
1921
About 104 years old
Biggest decade
1920s
48.1% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
11.9%
Spread across generations
Recorded since 1950
16
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1920s — 48.1% of all recorded uses (65).

Is Chiyo rising or falling?

Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.

Rank vs 1 year ago
—
Not ranked then
Rank vs 5 years ago
New entry
Not ranked then
Rank vs 10 years ago
—
Not ranked then
Births vs 10 years ago
—
Not published both years
Share of its own peak
0%
Peak was 1917 (12)
Years since peak
108
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Volatile
29.8% average annual change
Best rank ever
#2,582
1917

Spellings of Chiyo

Chiyo is not the most common spelling — Chaya is, with 61.3% against Chiyo's 0.53%.

Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.

Where Chiyo is used

Across 1910–2025, Chiyo was most concentrated in Hawaii — about 1 in 25,000 girls, against 1 in 679,202 across all states with data. It was least common in Washington (1 in —).

04 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1Hawaii1 in 25,000
  2. 2California1 in —
  3. 3Washington1 in —

Shading is the share of that state's recorded girls given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Chiyo has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Chiyo around the world

Where Chiyo ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.

  • England & Wales
    2012–2012
    #5,876
    in 2012

Popularity data from Office for National Statistics. ONS data under Open Government Licence v3.0.

Chiyo by the numbers

The raw record for each sex the name is used for.

As a girl's name

Rank in 2025
Unranked
Trend vs 5 yrs ago
—
Best rank ever
#2,582
1917
Peak year
1917
12 that year
First recorded
1914
Last recorded
2019
All-time count
135
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Chiyo

Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.

ChineloChisaChiannChinweOsiyoChisomChikaChizaraChicagoChivonChiaChianaChilohChinenyeChikaimaChiomaChingChiyekoChiekoChianeChiannaChideraChihiroChizuko

Sibling names for Chiyo

Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.

Explore around Chiyo

Top names of 1917, Chiyo's peak yearThe 1910s in fullOther names that peaked in 1917Girls' names starting with C