Karel
The girl's name Karel has been in the national records since 1916, with 1,814 births to its name. It is given to both boys and girls. It has not appeared in the national data since 2025. About 1,400 Karels are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 62.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Karel boys named Karel
Girls and boys called Karel
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 1,208 girls and 606 boys in all, and in 2009 the split was 9 to 17.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 26 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,814
- Estimated living today
- 1,400
- Median age today
- 62
- Peak year
- 1939
- Best rank
- 838th
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1916
- Girls / boys
- 1,208 / 606
How old the living Karels are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,814 babies given the name since 1916, about 1,400 are alive — 75 in every hundred. Roughly 160 of them are children and 600 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1963 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.
Notable Karels
- Karel Čapek (1890–1938)Czech writer
- Karel Gott (1939–2019)Czech singer and actor
- Karel Poborský (born 1972)Czech footballer
- Karel Appel (1921–2006)Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet
- Karel Schwarzenberg (1937–2023)Czech politician, minister of foreign affairs and vice prime minister
- Karel van Mander the Elder (1548–1606)Flemish painter, poet and art historian
- Karel Hynek Mácha (1810–1836)Czech poet, traveller, playwright, lawyer and writer
- Karel Reisz (1926–2002)Czech-born British director, producer, film theorist, theatre director
People named Karel with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Karel is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Karel is most concentrated in Michigan (5.7×), California (3.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1939
The most popular girls’ names the year Karel peaked:
Karel elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Karel | 835 | 1,131st |
| Belgium boys | Karel | 782 | 178th |
| France girls | Karel | 210 | 2,153rd |
| England and Wales boys | Karel | 50 | 2,964th |
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.
Karel: rank by region
In 2025, Karel was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Karel | 464 | 12 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Karel appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (341st).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 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.
Karel 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 | Karel | 9,665 | 20,752 |
| the Netherlands girls | Karel | 7 | 153 |
| Finland boys | Karel | 63 | 100 |
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 Karel lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 337 men called Karel 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Karel | 34 | 0.064 | 1,318 |
| Guadalajara | Karel | 7 | 0.048 | 1,065 |
| Palmas, Las | Karel | 19 | 0.033 | 2,246 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Karel | 31 | 0.031 | 1,923 |
| Balears, Illes | Karel | 11 | 0.018 | 2,901 |
| Málaga | Karel | 14 | 0.016 | 2,680 |
Listed in 20 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 32 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
Karel 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.