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Carlos vs Cartier

American parents have registered 309,076 Carloses since 1880, against 2,785 Cartiers. Carlos is still ahead, with 2,418 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Carlos Cartier

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 2022, when Carlos had 2,599 and Cartier had 246.

Side by side

  Carlos Cartier
Total US births 309,0762,785
Most in one year 6,864246
Babies in 2025 2,418161
Estimated living today 274,0002,800
Median age today 306
Peak year 20012022
Best rank 59th boys982nd boys
Rank in 2025 150th1,297th
First recorded 18801983
Girls / boys 2,040 / 307,036307 / 2,478

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 Carloses alive today are over 30; half the Cartiers are over 6. That is 24 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 Cartier
England and Wales 1,31818

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 Cartier.