Charles
Charles is a boy's name that peaked in 1947, when it was the 9th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 48th. About 1.2 million Charleses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 59.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Charles boys named Charles
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 2,447,135
- Estimated living today
- 1.2 million
- Median age today
- 59
- Peak year
- 1947
- Best rank
- 9th
- Rank in 2025
- 48th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 12,476 / 2,434,659
How old the living Charleses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 2,447,135 babies given the name since 1880, about 1.2 million are alive — 49 in every hundred. Roughly 119,000 of them are children and 478,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1966 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
From French Charles, from Old French Charles, Carles, from Latin Carolus, and also reinfluenced by Frankish and Old High German Karl, from Proto-Germanic *karilaz (“free man”); compare the English word churl and the German Kerl. In reference to the Ecuadorian island, a clipping of the original name King Charles's Island, granted in honor of Charles II of England.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Charless
- Charles Dickens (1812–1870)English novelist and social critic
- Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970)French general and statesman
- Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)French poet and critic
- Charles III (born 1948)King of the United Kingdom since 2022
- Charles V (1500–1558)Holy Roman Emperor from 1519 to 1556
- Charles Babbage (1791–1871)English mathematician, philosopher, and engineer
- Charles I of England (1600–1649)King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1625 to 1649
- Charles Perrault (1628–1703)French author
People named Charles with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Charles is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Charles is most concentrated in West Virginia (2.1×), Kentucky (1.7×), the District of Columbia (1.7×), Mississippi (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1947
The most popular boys’ names the year Charles peaked:
Charles elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Charles | 245,540 | 18th |
| England and Wales boys | Charles | 33,528 | 41st |
| New Zealand boys | Charles | 4,200 | 59th |
| Ireland boys | Charles | 3,682 | 43rd |
| Scotland boys | Charles | 3,621 | 55th |
| Belgium boys | Charles | 3,200 | 35th |
| Norway boys | Charles | 708 | 179th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Charles | 607 | 75th |
| Switzerland boys | Charles | 580 | 222nd |
| France girls | Charles | 230 | 771st |
| Poland boys | Charles | 111 birth registrations | 307th |
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.
Charles: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Charles | 176 | 0.014% | 343rd |
| French boys | Switzerland | Charles | 403 | 0.093% | 68th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Charles | 1 | 0.002% | 179th |
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, Charles is most concentrated in Geneva, where 0.13% of children were given it – 134 of them.
Charles: rank by region
In 2025, Charles was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Charles | 39 | 104 |
| Wallonia | Charles | 49 | 57 |
In 2023, Charles was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Charles | 10 | 1 |
In 2025, Charles was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zachodniopomorskie | Charles | 168 | 2 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Charles appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (6th), Province of Namur (25th), Province of Walloon Brabant (31st), Province of Liège (48th), Province of East Flanders (52nd), Province of Antwerp (72nd), Province of Hainaut (72nd), Province of Limburg (109th) and Province of Flemish Brabant (112th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – 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.
Charles by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 35 | 239th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Charles 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 boys | Charles | 4,217 | 10,051 |
| Finland boys | Charles | 245 | 636 |
| the Netherlands girls | Charles | — | 153 |
| Finland girls | Charles | — | 8 |
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 Charles lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 676 men called Charles were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lleida | Charles | 15 | 0.064 | 1,070 |
| Araba/Álava | Charles | 10 | 0.059 | 1,018 |
| Girona | Charles | 24 | 0.058 | 1,115 |
| Balears, Illes | Charles | 35 | 0.056 | 1,087 |
| Málaga | Charles | 48 | 0.055 | 1,011 |
| Almería | Charles | 20 | 0.051 | 1,197 |
Listed in 27 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 25 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
Charles 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.