Carly
The girl's name Carly has been in the national records since 1951, with 66,626 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 1,008th. About 65,000 Carlys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 28.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Carly boys named Carly
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 66,626
- Estimated living today
- 65,000
- Median age today
- 28
- Peak year
- 1995
- Best rank
- 122nd
- Rank in 2025
- 1,008th
- First recorded
- 1951
- Girls / boys
- 66,466 / 160
How old the living Carlys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 66,626 babies given the name since 1951, about 65,000 are alive — 98 in every hundred. Roughly 15,000 of them are children and 19 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1997 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 Germanic languages
A feminine form of Carl with, taken to use in the latter half of the 20th century; also a pet form of Carla, Carlene and Carlotta.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Carlys
- Carly Rae Jepsen (born 1985)Canadian singer
- Carly Fiorina (born 1954)American businesswoman and politician
- Carly Simon (born 1943)American musician
- Carly Chaikin (born 1990)American actress
- Carly Patterson (born 1988)American artistic gymnast and rock singer
- Carly Gullickson (born 1986)American female tennis player
- Carly Pope (born 1980)Canadian actress
- Carly Schroeder (born 1990)former American actress
People named Carly with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Carly is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Carly is most concentrated in Utah (1.8×), New Jersey (1.7×), Washington (1.5×), Delaware (1.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1995
The most popular girls’ names the year Carly peaked:
Carly elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Carly | 2,523 | 187th |
| Scotland girls | Carly | 2,253 | 71st |
| Ireland girls | Carly | 607 | 182nd |
| France girls | Carly | 260 | 1,838th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Carly | 239 | 119th |
| France boys | Carly | 15 | 4,966th |
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.
Carly 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Carly | 6 | 6 |
A count of people on a register – 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.
Related names
Carly 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.