Cara — #1294 US girls' name

What the Data Says About Cara

The Social Security Administration has registered 53,135 babies named Cara between 1882 and 2024, spanning 143 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Cara currently holds the #1294 rank among girls for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 1985, when 1,465 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Cara performed strongest in the 1980s, accumulating 13,277 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Cara shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in California, which accounts for 4,316 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by New York and Texas. In total, SSA state-level files list Cara in 51 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Cara in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 53,135 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.