Karl
Karl is a boy's name that peaked in 1960, when it was the 135th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 1,585th. About 66,000 Karls are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 58.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Karl boys named Karl
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 101,751
- Estimated living today
- 66,000
- Median age today
- 58
- Peak year
- 1960
- Best rank
- 135th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,585th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 915 / 100,836
How old the living Karls are
born that year still alive today
Of the 101,751 babies given the name since 1880, about 66,000 are alive — 65 in every hundred. Roughly 2,700 of them are children and 21,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1967 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
From German and gmq (Scandinavian) Karl, from Germanic.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Karls
- Karl Marx (1818–1883)German-born philosopher
- Karl Popper (1902–1994)Austrian-British philosopher of science and social and política e falsificationism and for criticism of Plato, Hegel and Marx as totalitarian opponents of open society
- Karl Jaspers (1883–1969)German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher
- Karl Ferdinand Braun (1850–1918)German physicist
- Karl Adolph Gjellerup (1857–1919)Danish writer
- Karl Dönitz (1891–1980)German admiral and former president of Nazi Germany in 1945
- Karl Landsteiner (1868–1943)Jewish-Austrian biologist, physician and Nobel Prize laureate
- Karl Weierstraß (1815–1897)German mathematician
People named Karl with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Karl is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Karl is most concentrated in Alaska (1.9×), Wisconsin (1.8×), Utah (1.7×), the District of Columbia (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1960
The most popular boys’ names the year Karl peaked:
Karl elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Karl | 10,670 | 158th |
| Norway boys | Karl | 8,125 | 33rd |
| Ireland boys | Karl | 4,556 | 55th |
| New Zealand boys | Karl | 3,822 | 33rd |
| England and Wales boys | Karl | 2,689 | 110th |
| Denmark boys | Karl | 2,012 | 2nd |
| Austria boys | Karl | 478 | 49th |
| Switzerland boys | Karl | 384 | 339th |
| Belgium boys | Karl | 285 | 399th |
| Scotland boys | Karl | 282 | 149th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Karl | 229 | 93rd |
| Poland boys | Karl | 24 birth registrations | 424th |
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.
Karl: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Karl | 301 | 0.024% | 267th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Karl | 76 | 0.017% | 284th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Karl | 6 | 0.009% | 109th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Karl | 1 | 0.027% | 9th |
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, Karl is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.05% of children were given it – 148 of them.
Karl: rank by region
In 2021, Karl was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Karl | 391 | 7 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 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.
Karl by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 833 | 12th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Karl 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 | Karl | 3,666 | 8,122 |
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 Karl lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 191 men called Karl were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Karl | 20 | 0.038 | 2,040 |
| Palmas, Las | Karl | 16 | 0.028 | 2,585 |
| Málaga | Karl | 19 | 0.022 | 2,077 |
| Balears, Illes | Karl | 13 | 0.021 | 2,520 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Karl | 20 | 0.020 | 2,702 |
| Girona | Karl | 8 | 0.019 | 2,513 |
Listed in 8 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 44 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
Karl 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.