Humanverse

Karene vs Karina

American parents have registered 61,717 Karinas since 1880, against 501 Karenes. Karina is still ahead, with 363 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Karene against Karina, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Karene Karina

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

Of the 92 years in which either name was published, Karina for 69 years and Karene for 23 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Karene Karina
Total US births 50161,717
Most in one year 173,001
Babies in 2025 under 5363
Estimated living today 38061,000
Median age today 6127
Peak year 19631995
Best rank 3,066th girls109th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked749th
First recorded 19161956
Girls / boys 501 / 061,464 / 253

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 Karenes alive today are over 61; half the Karinas are over 27. That is 34 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 Karene Karina
France 1,0552,510

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: Karene and Karina.