Carey
Carey is a boy's name that peaked in 1957, when it was the 353rd most popular in the United States. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 6,446th. About 23,000 Careys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 52.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Carey boys named Carey
Girls and boys called Carey
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Carey crossed from girls to boys in 2004, having already crossed in 1969, and has stayed there for 16 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 81% boys, and in 2019 it was 72%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 112 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 29,621
- Estimated living today
- 23,000
- Median age today
- 52
- Peak year
- 1957
- Best rank
- 353rd
- Rank in 2025
- 6,446th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 12,741 / 16,880
How old the living Careys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 29,621 babies given the name since 1880, about 23,000 are alive — 77 in every hundred. Roughly 520 of them are children and 4,900 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1973 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Notable Careys
- Carey Mulligan (born 1985)English actress
- Carey Lowell (born 1961)American actress
- Carey Price (born 1987)Canadian ice hockey goaltender
- Carey Bell (1936–2007)American blues musician
- Carey McLeod (born 1998)Jamaican athlete
- Carey Wilson (1889–1962)American screenwriter, voice actor and film producer
- Carey Hart (born 1975)American freestyle motocross, motorcycle and off-road truck racer
- Carey Loftin (1914–1997)American actor
People named Carey with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Carey is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Carey is most concentrated in Georgia (2.4×), Louisiana (2.3×), Mississippi (2.1×), Alabama (2.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1957
The most popular boys’ names the year Carey peaked:
Carey elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Carey | 78 | 1,434th |
| England and Wales boys | Carey | 49 | 2,660th |
| Scotland girls | Carey | 19 | 464th |
| Ireland girls | Carey | 3 | 519th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Related names
Carey against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.