How Many People Are Named Karl?
people named Karl are alive in the United States today (estimate)
About 1 in 5,195 people in the US has this name
Based on 101,751 babies named Karl in Social Security records from 1880 to 2025, and the share of each birth year still alive in 2025.
Popularity Rank
💎 Rare
Peak Year
2,614 births
Trend
Stable (last 10 years)
📖 Name Origin & Meaning
Meaning:
German and Scandinavian form of CHARLES. This was the name of seven emperors of the Holy Roman Empire and an emperor of Austria, as well as kings of Sweden and Norway. Other famous bearers include Karl Marx (1818-1883), the German philosopher and revolutionary who laid the foundations for communism, and Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), a German existentialist philosopher.
Source of the meaning, origin, pronunciation and related names: Behind the Name.
Same Sound, Other Spellings
These names are pronounced like Karl in English. Counting Karl and these spellings together, about 291,986 people alive in the US have the name.
⚧ Gender Distribution
Of the babies given the name Karl, 1.2% were girls and 98.8% were boys.
👥 Age Distribution
The average person named Karl alive today is about 54 years old, and 46% are 60 or older. Half of them were between 42 and 67 in 2025.
📈 Popularity Over Time
Karl first appears in the records in 1880 and was given most often in 1960, to 2,614 babies. In 2025, 107 babies got the name.
Babies given the name each year, 1880 to 2025
🏆 Rank History
Karl has never been one of the 100 most popular boys' names. Its best rank was #135, in 1960 and 1964. In 2025 it ranked #1,593.
| Boys | |
|---|---|
| Rank in 2025 | #1,593 |
| Best rank | #135 (1960 and 1964) |
| Years in the top 100 | None |
| Rank in its biggest decade | #154 in the 1960s |
📍 State-Wise Distribution
People named Karl alive today, by the state where they were born (estimate; state records start in 1910).
More people named Karl were born in New York than in any other state: about 5,743 of those alive today. Compared with the national rate in the same years, Karl was given 2 times as often in Utah, 1.9 times in Alaska and 1.7 times in Wisconsin.
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