Sherry

The name arose in the early twentieth century as an English phonetic spelling of the French chérie, meaning darling, assisted by the fortified Spanish wine. It entered national tallies in 1909 as an informal domestic invention rather than an imported heirloom. In the late summer of 1962, the Four Seasons took their falsetto pop single Sherry to the top of the sales charts, cementing the spelling nationwide.

A Sherry belongs to an era of station wagons with faux-wood paneling and laminates that wiped clean with a damp sponge. The name reads as bright, conversational, and firmly rooted in the middle of the twentieth century. Today, with an average age of sixty-three, a Sherry is far more likely to organize a retirement luncheon than attend a high school graduation. In 2025, just twenty-three infants received the name, placing it somewhere between an heirloom and a curiosity.