Carter — #46 US boys' name

What the Data Says About Carter

The Social Security Administration has registered 200,762 babies named Carter between 1881 and 2024, spanning 144 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a boy's name, Carter currently holds the #46 rank among boys for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 2015, when 10,814 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Carter performed strongest in the 2010s, accumulating 95,250 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Carter shows notable generational variation in parental adoption. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in Texas, which accounts for 13,293 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by California and Ohio. In total, SSA state-level files list Carter in 51 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Carter 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 200,762 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.