Karel — unisex name

What the Data Says About Karel

The Social Security Administration has registered 1,208 babies named Karel between 1932 and 2009, spanning 78 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Karel currently falls outside the top 1,000 girls' names for 2009. The name reached its historical peak in 1939, when 69 babies received it in a single year. Karel is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 606 additional births since 1916.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Karel performed strongest in the 1940s, accumulating 361 births during that ten-year window. Across the 8 decades of recorded activity, Karel shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in California, which accounts for 39 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Michigan and Illinois. In total, SSA state-level files list Karel in 10 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Karel 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 1,208 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.