Kārlis

given name · Latin script

Meaning: Vīrieša vārds

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Kārlis is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Latvia than in any other country, where it is the 37th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • LVLatvia1 in 253(measured from records)
  • USUnited States1 in 1.1M
  • EEEstonia≈1 in 13K

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.

Latvia (measured from records)

7,426 people

Sources
120 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 253 (inferred from the name graph)

Latvia

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Karlis in US United States, GB United Kingdom, NO Norway and 3 more.

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)

recorded in Latvian

Vīrieša vārds

Sources 1

  • Tēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Kārlis 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.

Where Kārlis is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
LV Latvia#377,4261 in 2537.4KKārlis93
US United States—3071 in 1.1M269Karlis120
GB United Kingdom—≈150 est.≈1 in 454KlistedKarlis50
GH Ghana—≈120 est.≈1 in 256K—Karlis5
EE Estonia—≈92 est.≈1 in 13K14Karlis14
SE Sweden—821 in 124K82Karlis14
NO Norway—≈53 est.≈1 in 103K190Karlis11
IS Iceland—171 in 21K17——

7,426 people counted by PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register). 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: PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Kārlis is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Karlis

  • Russian given name11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Latvia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian

    Also written Карлис, Karlis, Карліс

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Kärlis, Karlis

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Karlis

  • Spanish given name7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Venezuela, Mexico, United States, Latvia

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Karlis, Karlîs, Kârlîs, Kärlis

  • Lithuanian given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Latvia, Lithuania

    Also written Karlis

  • Hindi given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Latvia, United States, India, United Kingdom

    Also written Karlis

28 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

18001850190019502000Kārlis Baumanis, b. 1835Kārlis Mīlenbahs, b. 1853Kārlis Balodis, b. 1864Kārlis Bētiņš, b. 1867Vilhelms Purvitis, b. 1872Kārlis Ulmanis, b. 1877Kārlis Johansons, b. 1890Kārlis Baumanis, b. 1892Kārlis Šteins, b. 1911Kārlis Lasmanis, b. 1994

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 8 sources across 4 countries.

Official registers attesting Kārlis
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
LV LatviaPMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register)—7.4K—
LV LatviaPMLP — Personvārdu meklētājs (per-name population-register lookup)—7.4K#55
EE EstoniaSiseministeerium — population register name list 20232023——

Reference works 2

  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

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 Kārlis mean?
Recorded meaning: Vīrieša vārds
Is Kārlis a male or female name?
Kārlis is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
What are other forms of the name Kārlis?
In the etymology graph, Carlos, Charles and Carl are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Kārlis have the most bearers?
In Latvia, the national register counted about 7.4 thousand people named Kārlis, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kārlis.
Where is Kārlis most common?
Kārlis is densest in Latvia, where the national register counts about 1 in 253 people carrying it.
How common is the name Kārlis?
In Latvia, the national register counted 7,426 people named Kārlis, about 1 in 253 residents.
How common is Kārlis compared with other names?
In Latvia, Kārlis is the 37th most common given name of 11,601 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Kārlis?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/k%C4%81rlis

The 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, “Kārlis” — the 37th most common given name in Latvia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Kārlis parses inside a full name →