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Carlo vs Carlos

American parents have registered 309,076 Carloses since 1880, against 16,000 Carlos. Carlos is still ahead, with 2,418 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Carlo 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 1916, when Carlo had 127 and Carlos had 234.

Side by side

  Carlo Carlos
Total US births 16,000309,076
Most in one year 2766,864
Babies in 2025 2762,418
Estimated living today 12,000274,000
Median age today 3330
Peak year 20252001
Best rank 867th boys59th boys
Rank in 2025 867th150th
First recorded 18941880
Girls / boys 80 / 15,9202,040 / 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 Carlos alive today are over 33; half the Carloses are over 30. That is 3 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 Carlo Carlos
Italy 20,273715
France 1,87510,685
England and Wales 7361,318
Switzerland 724387
Belgium 189218
Scotland 15439
Poland 33159
Ireland 2191
Northern Ireland 69

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: Carlo and Carlos.