Carla vs Carol

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Carla Carol

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 145 years in which either name was published, Carol for 91 years and Carla for 54 years. The lead changed hands once.

• 1880–1971 Carol ahead
• 1972–2025 Carla ahead

Side by side

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 Carols alive today are over 73; half the Carlas are over 57. That is 16 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Carla New Mexico (1.7×), the District of Columbia (1.5×), Oklahoma (1.5×)
• Carol South Dakota (1.8×), North Dakota (1.8×), Rhode Island (1.7×)

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.

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

• Carla vs Karla
• Carol vs Carole
• Carla vs Carolyn
• Carla vs Carl
• Carla vs Carlos
• Carla vs Carrie
• Carla vs Caroline
• Carol vs Carolyn