Humanverse

Carlos vs Carroll

American parents have registered 309,076 Carloses since 1880, against 41,347 Carrolls. Carlos is still ahead, with 2,418 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Carlos Carroll

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, Carlos for 81 years and Carroll for 65 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Carlos Carroll
Total US births 309,07641,347
Most in one year 6,8641,033
Babies in 2025 2,418under 5
Estimated living today 274,00014,000
Median age today 3072
Peak year 20011934
Best rank 59th boys164th boys
Rank in 2025 150thunranked
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 2,040 / 307,0365,916 / 35,431

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 Carrolls alive today are over 72; half the Carloses are over 30. That is 42 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 Carroll
Ireland 913

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 Carroll.