Charles
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from the male personal name Charles, via French from Germanic Carl, literally ‘man’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Charles is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 10th most common given name.
- IEIreland≈1 in 175(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 193
- SGSingapore≈1 in 213
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Charles itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #36 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 678 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 175 (inferred from the name graph)
1,207,972 people, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Carl in SE Sweden, IE Ireland and Karl in DE Germany.
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 the male personal name Charles, via French from Germanic Carl, literally ‘man’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Charles 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #10 | 1,207,972 | 1 in 275 | 1.2M | Charles | 678 |
| NG Nigeria | #130 | ≈340,000 est. | ≈1 in 635 | — | Charles | 170 |
| GB United Kingdom | #15 | ≈310,000 est. | ≈1 in 214 | 4 | Charles | 381 |
| DE Germany | #28 | ≈290,000 est. | ≈1 in 277 | listed | Karl | 268 |
| EG Egypt | #181 | ≈210,000 est. | ≈1 in 499 | — | Charles | 47 |
| SE Sweden | #19 | 198,642as Karl | 1 in 51 | 199K | Carl | 187 |
| IE Ireland | #68 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 175 | — | Carl | 125 |
| SG Singapore | #5 | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 213 | — | Charles | 140 |
| NZ New Zealand | #11 | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 193 | — | Charles | 171 |
1,207,972 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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)
Charles is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, (1) from OFr Charles, from Lat Carolus, from OG Karl ‘man’; later popular in the Stuart period; first attested Carolus 1208 Cur (Sf, Nf). (2) from OE ceorl ‘freeman, peasant’; first attested Osbert Cherle 1193 P (Wa)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Germanic ‘man’; used in Ireland and borne by Charles I and Charles the Great.
as a nameIrish first names
In French, From Carl, meaning ‘man’; a common French/European given name.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
In French, From Germanic Karl, meaning 'man' or 'free man'.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In English, Americanized given name used as surname form
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
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)
- Charles VIIb. 1403FRmonarch of the House of Valois who ruled as King of France (1403-1461)
- Charles VIIIb. 1470FRKing of France from 1483 to 1498
- Charles IXb. 1550FRKing of France (1550–1574)
- Charles Perraultb. 1628FRFrench author (1628-1703)
- Charles II of Englandb. 1630GBKing of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1630-1685)
- Carlos Roberto Darwinb. 1809GBnot in their usual nameEnglish naturalist and biologist (1809–1882)
- Charles Édouard Guillaumeb. 1861CHSwiss physicist (1861-1938)
- Leopold III of Belgiumb. 1901BEnot in their usual nameking of the Belgians from 1934 to 1951 (1901–1983)
- Tjalling Koopmansb. 1910NLnot in their usual nameDutch American economist (1910–1985)
- Herbert Brownb. 1912USnot in their usual nameAmerican chemist (1912–2004)
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 168 sources across 85 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.2M | #17 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 6.6K | #521 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 5.9K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.9K | #17 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 1.8K | — |
Reference works 8
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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
- What does the name Charles mean, and where does it come from?
- from the male personal name Charles, via French from Germanic Carl, literally ‘man’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Charles?
- In the etymology graph, Carlos, Carol and Carl are forms of the same name in other languages; Chuck, Chip and Chaz are recorded short or pet forms.
- Is Charles a male or female name?
- Charles is a male 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.
- How common is the name Charles?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,207,972 people named Charles in 2020, about 1 in 275 residents.
- How common is Charles compared with other names?
- In the United States, Charles is the 10th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
- In which country does Charles have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.2 million people named Charles, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled charles.
What do you want to know about Charles?
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/charlesThe 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, “Charles” — the 10th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.