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Carla vs Carlos

American parents have registered 309,076 Carloses since 1880, against 150,815 Carlas. Carlos is still ahead, with 2,418 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Carla against Carlos, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Carla Carlos

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Carlos for 118 years and Carla for 28 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Carla Carlos
Total US births 150,815309,076
Most in one year 5,8296,864
Babies in 2025 2232,418
Estimated living today 131,000274,000
Median age today 5730
Peak year 19622001
Best rank 78th girls59th boys
Rank in 2025 1,082nd150th
First recorded 18901880
Girls / boys 150,390 / 4252,040 / 307,036

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Carlas alive today are over 57; half the Carloses are over 30. That is 27 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Carla Carlos
Spain 65,48748,171
France 27,20010,685
Italy 6,268715
England and Wales 3,2901,318
Switzerland 1,340387
Scotland 1,54039
Ireland 1,27491
Belgium 849218
Norway 286675
New Zealand 323122
Poland 149159
Northern Ireland 2949

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Carla and Carlos.