Carlisle
Carlisle reached its high-water mark in 2012 at number 2,594, and has been recorded 2,329 times in all. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 3,240th. About 1,500 Carlisles are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 15.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Carlisle boys named Carlisle
Girls and boys called Carlisle
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 467 girls and 1,862 boys in all, and in 2025 the split was 9 to 36.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 29 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
- 2,329
- Estimated living today
- 1,500
- Median age today
- 15
- Peak year
- 2012
- Best rank
- 2,594th
- Rank in 2025
- 3,240th
- First recorded
- 1888
- Girls / boys
- 467 / 1,862
How old the living Carlisles are
born that year still alive today
Of the 2,329 babies given the name since 1888, about 1,500 are alive — 66 in every hundred. Roughly 840 of them are children and 170 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2010 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
From Middle English Carlele, from Middle English Carleol, Carleul, from xcb (compare Caer Ligualid in the Historia Brittonum, Middle Welsh Caer Liwelydd, Welsh Caerliwelydd, all suffixed with -ydd), composed of cel-bry-pro *kaɨr (“fort”) + cel-bry-pro (> Latin Luguvalium), from Proto-Celtic *Luguwalos.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Carlisles
- Carlisle Floyd (1926–2021)American composer
People named Carlisle with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Carlisle is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Carlisle is most concentrated in South Carolina (47.6×), Texas (1.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2012
The most popular boys’ names the year Carlisle peaked:
Carlisle elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Carlisle | 39 | 3,017th |
| France boys | Carlisle | 5 | 3,742nd |
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
Carlisle 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.