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Karla vs Karlo

American parents have registered 91,895 Karlas since 1880, against 1,061 Karlos. Karla is still ahead, with 340 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Karla Karlo

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 2024, when Karla had 385 and Karlo had 34.

Side by side

  Karla Karlo
Total US births 91,8951,061
Most in one year 2,06639
Babies in 2025 34030
Estimated living today 84,0001,000
Median age today 4119
Peak year 19642010
Best rank 182nd girls2,958th boys
Rank in 2025 799th3,658th
First recorded 19151959
Girls / boys 91,586 / 3090 / 1,061

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 Karlos 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 Karla Karlo
France 1,3505
England and Wales 89465
Switzerland 133107
Poland 752

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: Karla and Karlo.