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Cari vs Carlos

American parents have registered 309,076 Carloses since 1880, against 12,870 Caris. Carlos is still ahead, with 2,418 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Cari against Carlos, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Cari Carlos

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Carlos has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1968, when Cari had 410 and Carlos had 2,528.

Side by side

  Cari Carlos
Total US births 12,870309,076
Most in one year 5416,864
Babies in 2025 162,418
Estimated living today 12,000274,000
Median age today 4830
Peak year 19762001
Best rank 379th girls59th boys
Rank in 2025 9,457th150th
First recorded 19411880
Girls / boys 12,757 / 1132,040 / 307,036

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Caris alive today are over 48; half the Carloses are over 30. That is 18 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Cari Carlos
England and Wales 5171,318
Scotland 1439

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Cari and Carlos.