Humanverse

Caryn

Caryn is a girl's name that peaked in 1965, when it was the 421st most popular in the United States. It has not appeared in the national data since 2019. About 11,000 Caryns are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 54.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Caryn

By the numbers

Total US births
12,182
Estimated living today
11,000
Median age today
54
Peak year
1965
Best rank
421st
Rank in 2025
unranked
First recorded
1939

How old the living Caryns are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 12,182 babies given the name since 1939, about 11,000 are alive — 90 in every hundred. Roughly 130 of them are children and 2,400 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1971 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 Ancient Greek

A 20th-century spelling variant of Karen.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Caryns

People named Caryn with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Caryn is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Caryn is most concentrated in Illinois (2.9×), New York (2.6×), New Jersey (2.0×), Massachusetts (1.7×).

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

Names of 1965

The most popular girls’ names the year Caryn peaked:

All the names of 1965

Caryn elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
Scotland girls Caryn 77 374th
England and Wales girls Caryn 4 4,157th

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

Caryn against another name

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

Compare Caryn 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.