Carolyn — #1161 US girls' name

What the Data Says About Carolyn

The Social Security Administration has registered 556,593 babies named Carolyn between 1880 and 2024, spanning 145 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Carolyn currently holds the #1161 rank among girls for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 1947, when 20,741 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Carolyn performed strongest in the 1940s, accumulating 181,855 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Carolyn shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in Texas, which accounts for 34,450 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by New York and California. In total, SSA state-level files list Carolyn in 51 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Carolyn 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 556,593 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.