Karen
Karen is a girl's name that peaked in 1957, when it was the 5th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 1,279th. About 803,000 Karens are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 65.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Karen boys named Karen
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 990,774
- Estimated living today
- 803,000
- Median age today
- 65
- Peak year
- 1957
- Best rank
- 5th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,279th
- First recorded
- 1881
- Girls / boys
- 987,989 / 2,785
How old the living Karens are
born that year still alive today
Of the 990,774 babies given the name since 1881, about 803,000 are alive — 81 in every hundred. Roughly 12,000 of them are children and 405,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1960 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 Danish
From Danish Karen, a vernacular form of Catherine that arose in medieval Denmark. The sense "middle-aged woman" comes from the popularity of the name among baby boomers and Gen-Xers. The derogatory usage was popularized via African-American Vernacular English.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Karens
- Karen Blixen (1885–1962)Danish writer
- Karen Gillan (born 1987)Scottish actress and filmmaker
- Karen Horney (1885–1952)American-German psychoanalyst
- Karen Black (1939–2013)American actress, screenwriter, singer, and songwriter
- Karen Uhlenbeck (born 1942)American mathematician
- Karen Carpenter (1950–1983)American singer and drummer
- Karen Armstrong (born 1944)author and comparative religion scholar from Great Britain
- Karen Allen (born 1951)American actress
People named Karen with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Karen is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Karen is most concentrated in the District of Columbia (1.7×), Rhode Island (1.5×), Wisconsin (1.4×), Massachusetts (1.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1957
The most popular girls’ names the year Karen peaked:
Karen elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Karen | 13,910 | 74th |
| New Zealand girls | Karen | 13,524 | 1st |
| Ireland girls | Karen | 12,041 | 5th |
| Scotland girls | Karen | 9,223 | 2nd |
| Norway girls | Karen | 5,115 | 57th |
| England and Wales girls | Karen | 872 | 417th |
| Italy girls | Karen | 767 | — |
| Belgium girls | Karen | 682 | 123rd |
| Poland girls | Karen | 141 birth registrations | 244th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Karen | 87 | 133rd |
| France boys | Karen | 30 | 6,339th |
| Ireland boys | Karen | 9 | 250th |
| Poland boys | Karen | 2 birth registrations | 736th |
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.
Karen: rank by region
In 2011, Karen was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Karen | 516 | 10 |
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.
Karen 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 | Karen | 4,137 | 5,309 |
| Finland girls | Karen | 167 | 256 |
| the Netherlands boys | Karen | 6 | 31 |
| Finland boys | Karen | 12 | 18 |
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 Karen lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 292 men called Karen and 3,994 women called Karen 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Valencia/València | Karen | 73 | 0.054 | 1,106 |
| Rioja, La | Karen | 8 | 0.050 | 1,103 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Karen | 42 | 0.042 | 1,527 |
| Girona | Karen | 11 | 0.026 | 1,989 |
| Barcelona | Karen | 74 | 0.025 | 1,939 |
| Málaga | Karen | 12 | 0.014 | 3,050 |
Listed in 7 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 45 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.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Karen | 180 | 0.325 | 360 |
| Palmas, Las | Karen | 178 | 0.302 | 395 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Karen | 292 | 0.284 | 364 |
| Tarragona | Karen | 111 | 0.254 | 425 |
| Lleida | Karen | 56 | 0.251 | 415 |
| Barcelona | Karen | 749 | 0.246 | 377 |
Listed in 49 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 3 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
Karen 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.