Carol
About 825,584 American babies have been named Carol since 1880, most of them around 1946. In 2025 it ranked 2,239th. About 525,000 Carols are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 73.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Carol boys named Carol
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 825,584
- Estimated living today
- 525,000
- Median age today
- 73
- Peak year
- 1946
- Best rank
- 5th
- Rank in 2025
- 2,239th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 816,928 / 8,656
How old the living Carols are
born that year still alive today
Of the 825,584 babies given the name since 1880, about 525,000 are alive — 64 in every hundred. Roughly 2,300 of them are children and 401,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1952 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 Germanic languages
Shortened from Caroline. Associated by folk etymology with the English noun carol.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Carols
- Carol Greider (born 1961)American molecular biologist
- Joyce Carol Oates (born 1938)American author
- Carol I of Romania (1839–1914)king of Romania from 1881 to 1914
- Carol Burnett (born 1933)American actress, comedian and singer
- Carol II of Romania (1893–1953)king of Romania from 1930 to 1940
- Carol Channing (1921–2019)American actress
- Carol Reed (1906–1976)English film director
- Carol Kane (born 1952)American actress
People named Carol with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Carol is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Carol is most concentrated in South Dakota (1.8×), North Dakota (1.8×), Rhode Island (1.7×), Wisconsin (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1946
The most popular girls’ names the year Carol peaked:
Carol elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland girls | Carol | 5,111 | 38th |
| New Zealand girls | Carol | 3,626 | 20th |
| France girls | Carol | 2,930 | 224th |
| Scotland girls | Carol | 2,645 | 31st |
| Italy girls | Carol | 2,292 | — |
| France boys | Carol | 525 | 308th |
| England and Wales girls | Carol | 215 | 802nd |
| England and Wales boys | Carol | 41 | 2,133rd |
| Belgium girls | Carol | 7 | 869th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Carol | 7 | 314th |
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.
Carol: rank by region
In 2024, Carol was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Carol | 8 | 1 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Italy after 10 names – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Carol among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Carol | 30 | 62 |
| Finland boys | Carol | 7 | 20 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Carol lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 974 women called Carol were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Carol | 109 | 0.106 | 768 |
| Huesca | Carol | 10 | 0.089 | 782 |
| Málaga | Carol | 64 | 0.070 | 924 |
| Castellón/Castelló | Carol | 19 | 0.060 | 1,095 |
| Girona | Carol | 25 | 0.060 | 1,140 |
| Rioja, La | Carol | 10 | 0.060 | 1,095 |
Listed in 32 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 20 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Carol 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.