Carleton
About 4,839 American babies have been named Carleton since 1880, most of them around 1923. It has not appeared in the national data since 2023. About 2,000 Carletons are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 60.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Carleton
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 4,839
- Estimated living today
- 2,000
- Median age today
- 60
- Peak year
- 1923
- Best rank
- 631st
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1880
How old the living Carletons are
born that year still alive today
Of the 4,839 babies given the name since 1880, about 2,000 are alive — 41 in every hundred. Roughly 40 of them are children and 830 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1965 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.
Where the name comes from
Origin a surname
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Carletons
- Daniel Carleton Gajdusek (1923–2008)American medical researcher
- Carleton S. Coon (1904–1981)American anthropologist
- Carleton Carpenter (1926–2022)actor, magician, dancer, writer
- Carleton Watkins (1829–1916)American photographer
People named Carleton with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Carleton is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Carleton is most concentrated in Maine (46.6×), Massachusetts (9.8×), New York (3.1×), Connecticut (2.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1923
The most popular boys’ names the year Carleton peaked:
Related names
Carleton 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.