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Carlos vs Carmel

American parents have registered 309,076 Carloses since 1880, against 8,609 Carmels. Carlos is still ahead, with 2,418 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Carlos Carmel

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 1911, when Carlos had 69 and Carmel had 55.

Side by side

  Carlos Carmel
Total US births 309,0768,609
Most in one year 6,864189
Babies in 2025 2,41837
Estimated living today 274,0004,300
Median age today 3060
Peak year 20011962
Best rank 59th boys846th girls
Rank in 2025 150th4,987th
First recorded 18801888
Girls / boys 2,040 / 307,0367,216 / 1,393

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 Carmels alive today are over 60; half the Carloses are over 30. That is 30 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 Carlos Carmel
France 10,685330
Ireland 914,073
England and Wales 1,318396
Poland 1592
Scotland 397
Northern Ireland 93

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: Carlos and Carmel.