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Karl vs Karyna

American parents have registered 101,751 Karls since 1880, against 858 Karynas. Karl is still ahead, with 107 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Karl Karyna

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

Karl 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 2008, when Karl had 188 and Karyna had 31.

Side by side

  Karl Karyna
Total US births 101,751858
Most in one year 2,61442
Babies in 2025 1076
Estimated living today 66,000850
Median age today 5825
Peak year 19601997
Best rank 135th boys2,874th girls
Rank in 2025 1,585th13,208th
First recorded 18801974
Girls / boys 915 / 100,836858 / 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 Karls alive today are over 58; half the Karynas are over 25. That is 33 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 Karl Karyna
France 10,67010
England and Wales 2,6896
Poland 247

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: Karl and Karyna.