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Carmello vs Carol

American parents have registered 825,584 Carols since 1880, against 2,175 Carmellos. Carol is still ahead, with 82 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Carmello against Carol, 1880 to 2025 0 10k 20k 30k 40k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Carmello Carol

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

Carol 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 2013, when Carmello had 119 and Carol had 133.

Side by side

  Carmello Carol
Total US births 2,175825,584
Most in one year 14734,458
Babies in 2025 4482
Estimated living today 1,800525,000
Median age today 1373
Peak year 20111946
Best rank 1,198th boys5th girls
Rank in 2025 2,833rd2,239th
First recorded 19131880
Girls / boys 21 / 2,154816,928 / 8,656

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 Carols alive today are over 73; half the Carmellos are over 13. That is 60 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 Carmello Carol
France 303,455
England and Wales 4256

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: Carmello and Carol.