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Carlota vs Caroline

American parents have registered 250,719 Carolines since 1880, against 2,460 Carlotas. Caroline is still ahead, with 2,646 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Carlota against Caroline, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Carlota Caroline

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

Caroline 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 1922, when Carlota had 48 and Caroline had 1,269.

Side by side

  Carlota Caroline
Total US births 2,460250,719
Most in one year 665,029
Babies in 2025 412,646
Estimated living today 1,400196,000
Median age today 2425
Peak year 20232000
Best rank 2,646th girls65th girls
Rank in 2025 3,645th96th
First recorded 18871880
Girls / boys 2,460 / 0250,410 / 309

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.

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 Carlota Caroline
France 160156,570
England and Wales 1422,130
Belgium 52,086
Switzerland 97791
Poland 4235

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: Carlota and Caroline.