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Kari vs Karim

American parents have registered 60,627 Karis since 1880, against 6,944 Karims. But in 2025 it was Karim that was commoner, 198 babies to 113.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kari against Karim, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kari Karim

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 90 years in which either name was published, Kari for 73 years and Karim for 17 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Kari Karim
Total US births 60,6276,944
Most in one year 2,243376
Babies in 2025 113198
Estimated living today 57,0006,700
Median age today 4616
Peak year 19752023
Best rank 129th girls706th boys
Rank in 2025 2,076th1,084th
First recorded 19341957
Girls / boys 59,696 / 93158 / 6,886

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 Karis alive today are over 46; half the Karims are over 16. That is 30 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 Kari Karim
Norway 20,845327
England and Wales 1011,321
Belgium 16758
Scotland 13934
Ireland 362

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: Kari and Karim.