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Karisma vs Karla

American parents have registered 91,895 Karlas since 1880, against 2,148 Karismas. Karla is still ahead, with 340 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Karisma against Karla, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Karisma Karla

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

Karla has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1915 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2018, when Karisma had 54 and Karla had 476.

Side by side

  Karisma Karla
Total US births 2,14891,895
Most in one year 862,066
Babies in 2025 26340
Estimated living today 2,10084,000
Median age today 1941
Peak year 20061964
Best rank 2,229th girls182nd girls
Rank in 2025 4,987th799th
First recorded 19701915
Girls / boys 2,148 / 091,586 / 309

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 Karlas alive today are over 41; half the Karismas are over 19. 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 Karisma Karla
France 51,350
England and Wales 30894

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: Karisma and Karla.