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Carlyn

The girl's name Carlyn has been in the national records since 1900, with 4,373 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 8,362nd. About 3,400 Carlyns are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 39.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 20 40 60 80 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Carlyn boys named Carlyn

By the numbers

Total US births
4,373
Estimated living today
3,400
Median age today
39
Peak year
1992
Best rank
1,894th
Rank in 2025
8,362nd
First recorded
1900
Girls / boys
4,306 / 67

How old the living Carlyns are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 20 40 60 80 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 4,373 babies given the name since 1900, about 3,400 are alive — 78 in every hundred. Roughly 460 of them are children and 740 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1986 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 Carlyn is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Carlyn is most concentrated in California (3.5×), Maryland (3.0×), Texas (2.3×), Virginia (2.2×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1992

The most popular girls’ names the year Carlyn peaked:

All the names of 1992

Carlyn elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
Scotland girls Carlyn 58 369th
France girls Carlyn 5 2,896th
Ireland girls Carlyn 3 492nd

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

Carlyn against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Carlyn with a name of your own

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.