Carole
About 110,952 American babies have been named Carole since 1901, most of them around 1942. In 2025 it ranked 10,107th. About 63,000 Caroles are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 78.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Carole boys named Carole
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 110,952
- Estimated living today
- 63,000
- Median age today
- 78
- Peak year
- 1942
- Best rank
- 35th
- Rank in 2025
- 10,107th
- First recorded
- 1901
- Girls / boys
- 110,688 / 264
How old the living Caroles are
born that year still alive today
Of the 110,952 babies given the name since 1901, about 63,000 are alive — 57 in every hundred. Roughly 150 of them are children and 51,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1947 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 French
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Caroles
- Carole Lombard (1908–1942)American actress
- Carole King (born 1942)American singer-songwriter and musician
- Carole Bouquet (born 1957)French actress
- Carole Landis (1919–1948)American actress
- Carole Pateman (born 1940)British feminist, academic political theorist
- Carole Montillet (born 1973)alpine skier
- Carole Ann Ford (born 1940)British actress
- Carole André (born 1953)French actress
People named Carole with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Carole is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Carole is most concentrated in Massachusetts (1.9×), the District of Columbia (1.9×), Pennsylvania (1.8×), Maine (1.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1942
The most popular girls’ names the year Carole peaked:
Carole elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Carole | 105,820 | 15th |
| Scotland girls | Carole | 433 | 114th |
| Ireland girls | Carole | 278 | 162nd |
| Belgium girls | Carole | 151 | 364th |
| England and Wales girls | Carole | 21 | 2,683rd |
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.
Carole: rank by region
In 2003, Carole was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Carole | 349 | 7 |
In 2015, Carole was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Carole | 10 | 1 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names – 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.
Carole 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 | Carole | 10 | 18 |
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.
Where Carole lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 231 women called Carole 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
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Carole | 46 | 0.045 | 1,435 |
| Málaga | Carole | 25 | 0.027 | 1,738 |
| Balears, Illes | Carole | 15 | 0.024 | 2,167 |
| Murcia | Carole | 15 | 0.019 | 2,081 |
| Almería | Carole | 7 | 0.019 | 2,416 |
| Palmas, Las | Carole | 10 | 0.017 | 3,759 |
Listed in 11 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 41 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Carole 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.