Karol
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Polish: a male given name from Latin, equivalent to English Charles
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/karol/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Karol is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country, where it is the 76th most common given name.
- PLPoland1 in 231(measured from records)
- SKSlovakia≈1 in 1.2K
- USUnited States1 in 30K
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.
- Poland (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 329 (measured from records)
- 1 in 231 (inferred from the name graph)
165,862 people, 2026
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Poland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
possibly a shortened form of some Ashkenazic name, as for example Karolinski, a habitational name for someone from the town of Karolin, in Poland and Belams.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.
How Karol is read(measured from records)
Karol is one spelling over 3 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.
- Spanish35%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Karol in Spanish.
- English24%
Latin: protected with helmet
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
- Polish23%
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Karol 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | #76 | 165,862 | 1 in 231 | 166K | Karol | 222 |
| US United States | — | 11,198 | 1 in 30K | 9.3K | Karol | 329 |
| PE Peru | — | ≈7,400 est. | ≈1 in 4.3K | — | Karol | 28 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 6,899 | 1 in 739 | 6.9K | — | — |
| EC Ecuador | — | 6,614 | 1 in 2.6K | 6.6K | Karol | 19 |
| SK Slovakia | #39 | ≈4,600 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Karol | 118 |
| IS Iceland | — | 251 | 1 in 1.4K | 251 | — | — |
165,862 people counted by dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20), 2026. 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: dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; INEC — civil registry names; Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)
Karol is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
possibly a shortened form of some Ashkenazic name, as for example Karolinski, a habitational name for someone from the town of Karolin, in Poland and Belams.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from the personal name Karol (see Charles).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In German, männl. Vom., polnische Form von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
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)
- Karol Szymanowskib. 1882UAPolish composer (1882–1937)
- Karol Świerczewskib. 1897PLPolish general (1897-1947)
- John Paul IIb. 1920PLnot in their usual name264th pope of the Catholic Church (1978–2005)
- Karol Divínb. 1936HUCzechoslovak figure skater (1936–2022)
- Jerzy Buzekb. 1940PLnot in their usual namePrime Minister of Poland (r. 1997–2001); President of the European Parliament (r. 2009–2012)
- Karol Nawrockib. 1983PLPolish politician and historian, President of the Republic of Poland since 2025
- Tomasz Kędziorab. 1994PLnot in their usual namePolish association football player
- Karol Linettyb. 1995PLPolish footballer
- Karol Świderskib. 1997PLPolish association football player
- Karol Sevillab. 1999MXMexican actress, singer, songwriter and dancer
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 94 sources across 44 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 166K | #45 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20) | 2026 | 166K | #45 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 9.3K | #2,302 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 6.9K | #102 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 6.6K | #287 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.9K | #2,302 |
| PL Poland | Ministry of Digitalization — Imiona nadawane dzieciom w Polsce (2000–present) | 2025 | 721 | — |
| IS Iceland | Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry) | 2026 | 251 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20) | 2026 | 58 | #2,117 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 47 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 45 | — |
Reference works 8
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
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
- Where does the name Karol come from?
- possibly a shortened form of some Ashkenazic name, as for example Karolinski, a habitational name for someone from the town of Karolin, in Poland and Belams. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does Karol have the most bearers?
- In Poland, the national register counted about 166 thousand people named Karol, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled karol.
- Where is Karol most common?
- Karol is densest in Poland, where the national register counts about 1 in 231 people carrying it.
- What does the name Karol mean?
- In Polish, a male given name from Latin, equivalent to English Charles
- What are other forms of the name Karol?
- In the etymology graph, Carlos, Charles and Carol are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Karol?
- A machine transcription gives /karol/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- Is Karol a male or female name?
- Karol 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 Karol?
- In Poland, the national register counted 165,862 people named Karol in 2026, about 1 in 231 residents.
- How common is Karol compared with other names?
- In Poland, Karol is the 76th most common given name of 25,969 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Karol?
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/karolThe 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, “Karol” — the 76th most common given name in Poland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.