Karen — #1260 US girls' name

What the Data Says About Karen

The Social Security Administration has registered 987,811 babies named Karen between 1881 and 2024, spanning 144 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Karen currently holds the #1260 rank among girls for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 1957, when 40,590 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Karen performed strongest in the 1950s, accumulating 332,533 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Karen shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in California, which accounts for 91,356 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by New York and Pennsylvania. In total, SSA state-level files list Karen in 51 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Karen 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 987,811 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.