Chace is a variant of Chase, from an English surname meaning hunter or from the chase.
Chace is a purposeful respelling of Chase, an English name with distinctly occupational origins. Its roots lie in the Old French *chacier* and the Anglo-Norman *chace*, both meaning to hunt — and by extension, a name originally given to those who worked as hunters or who lived near a hunting ground in medieval England. Occupational surnames-turned-given-names have a long history in the Anglophone world, and Chase joined that tradition sometime in the nineteenth century, when surnames moving to the first-name position became fashionable in American naming culture.
The Chace spelling in particular reflects a twenty-first century aesthetic preference for names that look distinctive on the page while maintaining the familiar phonetics of the original. Actor Chace Crawford, best known for his role in *Gossip Girl*, brought the alternate spelling into popular awareness in the late 2000s, giving it a sleek, media-saturated association. The *Gossip Girl* era's influence on baby naming was significant — it made preppy, surname-style names feel aspirational rather than stuffy.
Today, Chace sits in an interesting cultural position: it has the solid, one-syllable punch of names popular in athletic and professional contexts, while the alternate spelling signals a degree of individuality. It belongs to a family of names — Chase, Drake, Cole, Blake — that feel simultaneously timeless and contemporary, at home in both a boardroom and on a sports field. For parents who want the energy of Chase with a slightly more distinctive identity, Chace offers that separation with minimal sacrifice of recognizability.
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