Carter
About 216,871 American babies have been named Carter since 1881, most of them around 2015. In 2025 it ranked 45th. About 210,000 Carters are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 11.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Carter boys named Carter
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 216,871
- Estimated living today
- 210,000
- Median age today
- 11
- Peak year
- 2015
- Best rank
- 24th
- Rank in 2025
- 45th
- First recorded
- 1881
- Girls / boys
- 10,038 / 206,833
How old the living Carters are
born that year still alive today
Of the 216,871 babies given the name since 1881, about 210,000 are alive — 97 in every hundred. Roughly 157,000 of them are children and 2,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2014 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 a surname
As an English name, from the occupation carter. As an Irish name, from Irish Mac Artúir.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Carters
- Carter Burwell (born 1954)American film composer
- Carter Jenkins (born 1991)American actor
- Carter Cruise (born 1991)American pornographic actress
- Carter Braxton (1736–1797)American politician (1736-1797), signer of the Declaration of Independence
- Carter Glass (1858–1946)American politician
- Carter Godwin Woodson (1875–1950)American historian, writer, and journalist
- Carter DeHaven (1886–1977)actor, director, writer
- Carter Bays (born 1975)American television writer and producer
People named Carter with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Carter is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Carter is most concentrated in Utah (2.2×), Idaho (2.0×), Nevada (1.7×), South Dakota (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2015
The most popular boys’ names the year Carter peaked:
Carter elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Carter | 12,041 | 60th |
| New Zealand boys | Carter | 2,031 | 21st |
| Scotland boys | Carter | 1,251 | 50th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Carter | 986 | 53rd |
| Ireland boys | Carter | 468 | 113th |
| France boys | Carter | 95 | 2,694th |
| England and Wales girls | Carter | 48 | 2,674th |
| Scotland girls | Carter | 11 | 666th |
| Poland boys | Carter | 5 birth registrations | 588th |
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.
Carter 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 boys | Carter | 5 | 13 |
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
Carter 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.