Humanverse

Carlee vs Carrie

American parents have registered 267,540 Carries since 1880, against 13,290 Carlees. But in 2025 it was Carlee that was commoner, 101 babies to 63.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Carlee against Carrie, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Carlee Carrie

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

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Carrie for 122 years and Carlee for 24 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Carlee Carrie
Total US births 13,290267,540
Most in one year 4648,688
Babies in 2025 10163
Estimated living today 13,000164,000
Median age today 2150
Peak year 20091977
Best rank 641st girls28th girls
Rank in 2025 1,911th2,719th
First recorded 19021880
Girls / boys 12,982 / 308266,350 / 1,190

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 Carries alive today are over 50; half the Carlees are over 21. That is 29 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 Carlee Carrie
Scotland 31,587
England and Wales 36964

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: Carlee and Carrie.