Carmen

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Carmen boys named Carmen

Girls and boys called Carmen

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 142,795 girls and 16,961 boys in all, and in 2025 the split was 798 to 104.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 138 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.

By the numbers

Total US births

159,756

Estimated living today

116,000

Median age today

50

Peak year

1960

Best rank

167th

Rank in 2025

389th

First recorded

1881

Girls / boys

142,795 / 16,961

How old the living Carmens are

born that year still alive today

Of the 159,756 babies given the name since 1881, about 116,000 are alive — 73 in every hundred. Roughly 16,000 of them are children and 29,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1975 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 Spanish

From Spanish Carmen, cognate. Made famous outside Spain by the opera Carmen (1875) by Georges Bizet.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Carmens

• Carmen Electra (born 1972)American actress, model, and singer
• Carmen Miranda (1909–1955)Brazilian singer
• Carmen Amaya (1918–1963)Spanish flamenco dancer and singer
• Carmen Maura (born 1945)Spanish actress
• Carmen Kass (born 1978)Estonian model and actress
• Carmen Pereira (1936–2016)Guinea-Bissauan politician
• Carmen Luvana (born 1981)Puerto Rican pornographic actress
• Carmen Ejogo (born 1973)British actress

People named Carmen with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Carmen is most common

• CA21,979
• NY20,599
• TX18,184
• IL7,830
• PA7,452
• NJ6,062
• OH5,241
• MI4,436
• FL4,425
• AZ4,138

Relative to how many babies each state records, Carmen is most concentrated in New Mexico (3.1×), Arizona (2.2×), New York (1.7×), Texas (1.6×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1960

The most popular girls’ names the year Carmen peaked:

• Mary
• Susan
• Linda
• Karen
• Donna
• Lisa

All the names of 1960

Carmen elsewhere

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.

Carmen: births by region

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, Carmen is most concentrated in Lucerne, where 0.10% of children were given it – 87 of them.

Carmen: rank by region

In 2017, Carmen was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

In 2024, Carmen was among the 10 most common names in 4 regions of Spain.

In 2025, Carmen was given 2 times or more in 15 regions of Poland.

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.

Carmen by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Carmen 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.

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 Carmen lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 333,187 women called Carmen were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Carol
• Carolyn
• Carl
• Carlos
• Carrie
• Caroline
• Carter
• Carla
• Carson
• Carole
• Carly
• Cara

Carmen against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Carmen vs Carol
• Carmen vs Carolyn
• Carmen vs Carl
• Carmen vs Carlos
• Carmen vs Carrie
• Carmen vs Caroline

Compare Carmen with a name of your own