Carlos
Carlos reached its high-water mark in 2001 at number 59, and has been recorded 309,076 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 150th. About 274,000 Carloses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 30.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Carlos boys named Carlos
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 309,076
- Estimated living today
- 274,000
- Median age today
- 30
- Peak year
- 2001
- Best rank
- 59th
- Rank in 2025
- 150th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 2,040 / 307,036
How old the living Carloses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 309,076 babies given the name since 1880, about 274,000 are alive — 89 in every hundred. Roughly 61,000 of them are children and 17,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1995 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 Portuguese, Spanish, from Latin, from Germanic languages
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Carloss
- Carlos Alazraqui (born 1962)American actor, comedian, voice actor, and singer
- Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012)Mexican writer
- Carlos Slim (born 1940)Mexican business magnate and investor
- Carlos Santana (born 1947)American guitarist
- Carlos Tevez (born 1984)Argentine association football player
- Carlos Menem (1930–2021)Argentinean president between 1989 and 1999
- William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)American poet
- Carlos Castañeda (1925–1998)Peruvian-American author
People named Carlos with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Carlos is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Carlos is most concentrated in New Mexico (3.2×), Arizona (3.1×), Texas (2.6×), California (2.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2001
The most popular boys’ names the year Carlos peaked:
Carlos elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spain boys | Carlos | 48,171 | 9th |
| France boys | Carlos | 10,685 | 86th |
| England and Wales boys | Carlos | 1,318 | 476th |
| Italy boys | Carlos | 715 | — |
| Norway boys | Carlos | 675 | 252nd |
| Switzerland boys | Carlos | 387 | 266th |
| Belgium boys | Carlos | 218 | 537th |
| Poland boys | Carlos | 159 birth registrations | 269th |
| New Zealand boys | Carlos | 122 | 83rd |
| Ireland boys | Carlos | 91 | 472nd |
| Scotland boys | Carlos | 39 | 533rd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Carlos | 9 | 390th |
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.
Carlos: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Carlos | 263 | 0.021% | 204th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Carlos | 110 | 0.025% | 219th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Carlos | 14 | 0.021% | 88th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Carlos is most concentrated in Geneva, where 0.04% of children were given it – 38 of them.
Carlos: rank by region
In 2023, Carlos was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Carlos | 879 | 5 |
In 2022, Carlos was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Spain.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Extremadura | Carlos | 9 | 63 |
In 2025, Carlos was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Małopolskie | Carlos | 234 | 2 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Spain after 10 names, Poland below 2 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.
Carlos by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 49 | 199th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Carlos 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 | Carlos | 934 | 2,172 |
| Finland boys | Carlos | 246 | 419 |
| the Netherlands girls | Carlos | — | 15 |
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 Carlos lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 273,546 men called Carlos 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Huesca | Carlos | 1,946 | 16.608 | 3 |
| Teruel | Carlos | 1,139 | 16.424 | 5 |
| Madrid | Carlos | 53,728 | 15.768 | 5 |
| Ávila | Carlos | 1,268 | 15.699 | 6 |
| Segovia | Carlos | 1,215 | 15.300 | 6 |
| Valladolid | Carlos | 3,937 | 15.296 | 8 |
Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Carlos 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.