Humanverse

Carlynn vs Carrie

American parents have registered 267,540 Carries since 1880, against 825 Carlynns. Carrie is still ahead, with 63 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Carlynn against Carrie, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Carlynn Carrie

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

Carrie 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 2023, when Carlynn had 18 and Carrie had 68.

Side by side

  Carlynn Carrie
Total US births 825267,540
Most in one year 258,688
Babies in 2025 563
Estimated living today 760164,000
Median age today 2750
Peak year 20171977
Best rank 5,191st girls28th girls
Rank in 2025 14,942nd2,719th
First recorded 19221880
Girls / boys 825 / 0266,350 / 1,190

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 Carries alive today are over 50; half the Carlynns are over 27. That is 23 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Carlynn Carrie
Scotland 31,587

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: Carlynn and Carrie.