Caroline
The girl's name Caroline has been in the national records since 1880, with 250,719 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 96th. About 196,000 Carolines are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 25.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Caroline boys named Caroline
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 250,719
- Estimated living today
- 196,000
- Median age today
- 25
- Peak year
- 2000
- Best rank
- 65th
- Rank in 2025
- 96th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 250,410 / 309
How old the living Carolines are
born that year still alive today
Of the 250,719 babies given the name since 1880, about 196,000 are alive — 78 in every hundred. Roughly 64,000 of them are children and 18,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2000 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
Borrowed in the 17th century from French Caroline, from Italian Carolina or its etymon Latin Carolīna, from Latin Carolus (“Charles”), from Middle High German Karl, + -īna..
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Carolines
- Caroline Wozniacki (born 1990)Danish tennis player
- Caroline Herschel (1750–1848)German-British astronomer
- Caroline Kennedy (born 1957)American author and diplomat
- Caroline of Ansbach (1683–1737)Queen consort of Great Britain and Ireland from 1727 to 1737
- Princess Caroline of Monaco (born 1957)eldest child of Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, and Grace Kelly
- Caroline Bonaparte (1782–1839)Queen of Naples and Sicily
- Caroline of Brunswick (1768–1821)Queen consort of the United Kingdom and Hanover from 1820 to 1821
- Caroline Garcia (born 1993)French tennis player
People named Caroline with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Caroline is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Caroline is most concentrated in the District of Columbia (1.9×), South Carolina (1.9×), Connecticut (1.7×), Massachusetts (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2000
The most popular girls’ names the year Caroline peaked:
Caroline elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Caroline | 156,570 | 10th |
| Denmark girls | Caroline | 14,476 | 5th |
| Ireland girls | Caroline | 13,199 | 3rd |
| Norway girls | Caroline | 5,766 | 17th |
| Scotland girls | Caroline | 4,892 | 19th |
| New Zealand girls | Caroline | 2,530 | 60th |
| England and Wales girls | Caroline | 2,130 | 182nd |
| Belgium girls | Caroline | 2,086 | 26th |
| Sweden girls | Caroline | 916 | 48th |
| Switzerland girls | Caroline | 791 | 71st |
| Italy girls | Caroline | 359 | — |
| Poland girls | Caroline | 235 birth registrations | 182nd |
| Northern Ireland girls | Caroline | 110 | 112th |
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.
Caroline: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Caroline | 442 | 0.036% | 96th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Caroline | 330 | 0.076% | 37th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Caroline | 15 | 0.023% | 110th |
| Romansh girls | Switzerland | Caroline | 4 | 0.108% | 5th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Caroline is most concentrated in Geneva, where 0.09% of children were given it – 87 of them.
Caroline: rank by region
In 2024, Caroline was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Caroline | 742 | 6 |
In 2019, Caroline was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Caroline | 10 | 1 |
In 2021, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Caroline appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (275th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, 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.
Caroline by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 14 | 427th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Caroline 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Caroline | 11,398 | 20,285 |
| Finland girls | Caroline | 394 | 1,178 |
| the Netherlands boys | Caroline | — | 107 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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 Caroline lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 1,188 women called Caroline 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Málaga | Caroline | 99 | 0.108 | 685 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Caroline | 103 | 0.100 | 807 |
| Balears, Illes | Caroline | 62 | 0.099 | 780 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Caroline | 50 | 0.090 | 1,012 |
| Palmas, Las | Caroline | 52 | 0.088 | 1,108 |
| Tarragona | Caroline | 34 | 0.078 | 992 |
Listed in 33 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 19 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
Caroline 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.