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Caroline vs Carrieann

American parents have registered 250,719 Carolines since 1880, against 669 Carrieanns. Caroline is still ahead, with 2,646 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Caroline Carrieann

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 1977, when Caroline had 1,204 and Carrieann had 47.

Side by side

  Caroline Carrieann
Total US births 250,719669
Most in one year 5,02947
Babies in 2025 2,646under 5
Estimated living today 196,000640
Median age today 2547
Peak year 20001977
Best rank 65th girls2,026th girls
Rank in 2025 96thunranked
First recorded 18801967
Girls / boys 250,410 / 309669 / 0

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 Carrieanns alive today are over 47; half the Carolines are over 25. That is 22 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 Caroline Carrieann
Scotland 4,8923
England and Wales 2,1307

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: Caroline and Carrieann.