Carmelia vs Caroline

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Carmelia 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 1959, when Carmelia had 22 and Caroline had 1,044.

Side by side

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 Carmelias alive today are over 56; half the Carolines are over 25. That is 31 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.

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

• Caroline vs Carolyn
• Carmelia vs Carol
• Carmelia vs Carolyn
• Carmelia vs Carl
• Carmelia vs Carlos
• Carmelia vs Carrie
• Caroline vs Carol
• Caroline vs Carl