Karla
Karla reached its high-water mark in 1964 at number 182, and has been recorded 91,895 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 799th. About 84,000 Karlas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 41.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Karla boys named Karla
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 91,895
- Estimated living today
- 84,000
- Median age today
- 41
- Peak year
- 1964
- Best rank
- 182nd
- Rank in 2025
- 799th
- First recorded
- 1915
- Girls / boys
- 91,586 / 309
How old the living Karlas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 91,895 babies given the name since 1915, about 84,000 are alive — 92 in every hundred. Roughly 11,000 of them are children and 13,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1984 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
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Karlas
- Karla Sofía Gascón (born 1972)Spanish actress
- Karla Souza (born 1985)Mexican actress
- Karla Avelar (born 1978)LGBTI Activist
- Karla Homolka (born 1970)Canadian convicted killer (manslaughter) and ex-wife of Paul Bernardo
- Karla Álvarez (1972–2013)Mexican actress
- Karla LaVey (born 1952)Daughter of Anton LaVey
- Karla Henry (born 1986)Filipino beauty pageant contestant
- Karla Crome (born 1988)British actress
People named Karla with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Karla is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Karla is most concentrated in South Dakota (2.3×), North Dakota (2.1×), Arizona (2.0×), California (2.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1964
The most popular girls’ names the year Karla peaked:
Karla elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Denmark girls | Karla | 6,764 | 6th |
| France girls | Karla | 1,350 | 439th |
| England and Wales girls | Karla | 894 | 433rd |
| Ireland girls | Karla | 429 | 194th |
| Scotland girls | Karla | 287 | 252nd |
| Norway girls | Karla | 238 | 277th |
| Switzerland girls | Karla | 133 | 733rd |
| Poland girls | Karla | 75 birth registrations | 390th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Karla | 72 | 155th |
| New Zealand girls | Karla | 62 | 88th |
| Belgium girls | Karla | 49 | 1,000th |
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.
Karla: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Karla | 115 | 0.009% | 551st |
| French girls | Switzerland | Karla | 16 | 0.004% | 562nd |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Karla | 2 | 0.003% | 104th |
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, Karla is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.01% of children were given it – 45 of them.
Karla: rank by region
In 2021, Karla was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Karla | 881 | 5 |
In 2025, Karla was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mazowieckie | Karla | 326 | 2 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, 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.
Karla by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 230 | 89th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Karla 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 | Karla | 442 | 530 |
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 Karla lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 2,372 women called Karla 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gipuzkoa | Karla | 103 | 0.275 | 416 |
| Araba/Álava | Karla | 36 | 0.207 | 516 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Karla | 109 | 0.197 | 553 |
| Palmas, Las | Karla | 94 | 0.159 | 672 |
| Bizkaia | Karla | 92 | 0.153 | 601 |
| Lugo | Karla | 25 | 0.149 | 557 |
Listed in 47 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 5 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
Karla 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.