Carmen
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: a female given name transferred from the place name, traditionally popular in Spain
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kaɾmen/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Carmen is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Venezuela than in any other country, where it is the 4th most common given name.
- PRPuerto Rico≈1 in 38(inferred from the name graph)
- VEVenezuela≈1 in 62
- ECEcuador1 in 122
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Venezuela (inferred from the name graph)
- #61 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 548 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 38 (inferred from the name graph)
≈460,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Puerto Rico, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Carmén in DO Dominican Republic.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From Latin carmen, 'song' or 'poem'; also associated with Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
How Carmen is read(measured from records)
Carmen is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Spanish77%
a female given name transferred from the place name, traditionally popular in Spain
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Del hebreo Karm-El, ‘viña de Dios’; por extensión, ‘jardín’. Influyó el latín carmen ‘canto’.
as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios
- English12%
Hebrew: after Mount Carmel, in the Holy Land; also 'song'.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
A female given name from Spanish in the nineteenth century.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Carmen counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VE Venezuela | #4 | ≈460,000 est. | ≈1 in 62 | — | Carmen | 123 |
| ES Spain | #11 | 333,187 | 1 in 150 | 358K | Carmen | 277 |
| PE Peru | #9 | ≈240,000 est. | ≈1 in 133 | 194K | Carmen | 141 |
| US United States | #187 | 237,758 | 1 in 1.4K | 229K | Carmen | 548 |
| CO Colombia | #65 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 324 | — | Carmen | 165 |
| EC Ecuador | #637 | 139,032 | 1 in 122 | 139K | Carmen | 95 |
| PR Puerto Rico | #1 | ≈85,000 est. | ≈1 in 38 | — | Carmen | 85 |
| DO Dominican Republic | — | ≈75,000 est. | ≈1 in 140 | 18K | Carmén | 97 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); RENIEC — DNI population names; INEC — civil registry names; JCE — Nombres más registrados (annual). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Carmen is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, From Latin carmen, 'song' or 'poem'; also associated with Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Alteration of CARMEL under the influence of the word carmen ‘song’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Frida Kahlob. 1907MXnot in their usual nameMexican painter (1907–1954)
- Rita Hayworthb. 1918USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (1918–1987)
- Carmen Amayab. 1918ESSpanish flamenco dancer and singer
- Carmen McRaeb. 1920USAmerican jazz musician and actress (1922-1994)
- Carmen Argenzianob. 1943USactor from the United States (1943-2019)
- Lea Salongab. 1971PHnot in their usual nameFilipino actress and singer (born 1971)
- Carmen Electrab. 1972USAmerican actress, model, and singer
- Carmen Ejogob. 1973GBBritish actress
- Carmen Kassb. 1978EEEstonian model and actress (born 1978)
- Catharina-Amalia, Princess of Orangeb. 2003NLnot in their usual nameheir apparent to the throne of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 133 sources across 64 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 358K | #3 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 333K | #8 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 229K | #239 |
| PE Peru | RENIEC — DNI population names | 2019 | 194K | #5 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 139K | #4 |
| DO Dominican Republic | JCE — Nombres más registrados (annual) | 2025 | 18K | #9 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 9K | #239 |
| DO Dominican Republic | Dominican Republic — Nombres más comunes registrados 2022-2023 | 2023 | 947 | #6 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 798 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 104 | — |
Reference works 7
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Carmen a male or female name?
- Carmen is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- Where does the name Carmen come from?
- From Latin carmen, 'song' or 'poem'; also associated with Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- What are other forms of the name Carmen?
- In the etymology graph, Carmela, Carmelita and Carmella are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Carmen have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 460 thousand people named Carmen in Venezuela, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled carmen.
- How do you pronounce Carmen?
- A machine transcription gives /kaɾmen/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What does the name Carmen mean?
- In Spanish, a female given name transferred from the place name, traditionally popular in Spain
- How common is the name Carmen?
- In Spain, the national register counted 333,187 people named Carmen, about 1 in 150 residents.
- How common is Carmen compared with other names?
- In Venezuela, Carmen is the 4th most common given name of 218,181 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Carmen?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/carmenThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Carmen” — the 4th most common given name in Venezuela. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.