Carolyn
The girl's name Carolyn has been in the national records since 1880, with 558,397 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 1,222nd. About 360,000 Carolyns are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 71.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Carolyn boys named Carolyn
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 558,397
- Estimated living today
- 360,000
- Median age today
- 71
- Peak year
- 1947
- Best rank
- 15th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,222nd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 556,777 / 1,620
How old the living Carolyns are
born that year still alive today
Of the 558,397 babies given the name since 1880, about 360,000 are alive — 65 in every hundred. Roughly 5,600 of them are children and 234,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1954 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 variant of Caroline.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Carolyns
- Carolyn Bertozzi (born 1966)American chemist
- Carolyn S. Shoemaker (1929–2021)American astronomer, researcher and university teacher
- Carolyn Porco (born 1953)American planetary scientist
- Carolyn Jones (1930–1983)American actress
- Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy (1966–1999)American publicist and socialite
- Carolyn Schuler (1943–2024)American swimmer
- Carolyn Waldo (born 1964)Canadian synchronized swimmer
- Carolyn Lawrence (born 1967)American voice actress
People named Carolyn with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Carolyn is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Carolyn is most concentrated in Arkansas (2.1×), West Virginia (2.0×), the District of Columbia (1.8×), Alabama (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1947
The most popular girls’ names the year Carolyn peaked:
Carolyn elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Zealand girls | Carolyn | 3,212 | 33rd |
| Scotland girls | Carolyn | 921 | 87th |
| Ireland girls | Carolyn | 498 | 178th |
| France girls | Carolyn | 400 | 1,112th |
| England and Wales girls | Carolyn | 150 | 1,018th |
| Belgium girls | Carolyn | 12 | 967th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Carolyn | 11 | 286th |
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.
Carolyn 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 | Carolyn | 28 | 48 |
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
Carolyn 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.