Karin
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Karin is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country, where it is the 58th most common given name. In English, recorded as A female given name from Danish [in turn from Ancient Greek Αἰκατερῑ́νη (Aikaterī́nē)], variant of Karen.
- SESweden1 in 70(measured from records)
- ATAustria≈1 in 255
- DEGermany≈1 in 338
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 Karin 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.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 457 (measured from records)
- 1 in 70 (inferred from the name graph)
≈240,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Sweden
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Karine in BR Brazil, FR France.
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)
Somali: town on the Gulf of Aden; also a short form of Katherine.
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
How Karin is read(measured from records)
Karin 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.
- English34%
A female given name from Danish [in turn from Ancient Greek Αἰκατερῑ́νη (Aikaterī́nē)], variant of Karen.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German32%
a female given name, popular in Germany from the 1930s to the 1960s
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
weibl. Vom., schwedische Form von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
- Spanish11%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Karin in Spanish.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Karin 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | #58 | ≈240,000 est. | ≈1 in 338 | — | Karin | 251 |
| SE Sweden | #13 | 146,129 | 1 in 70 | 146K | Karin | 178 |
| FR France | — | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 538 | 121K | Karine | 5 |
| BR Brazil | #305 | 74,405as Karine | 1 in 2.8K | 74K | Karine | 178 |
| AT Austria | #31 | ≈35,000 est. | ≈1 in 255 | 4.2K | Karin | 172 |
| DK Denmark | #92 | 13,770 | 1 in 426 | 14K | Karin | 139 |
| NO Norway | #86 | 10,264 | 1 in 533 | 31K | Karin | 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: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Karin 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.
Somali: town on the Gulf of Aden; also a short form of Katherine.
as a nameAfrican Names
doing; accomplishing; rejoicing; praising; jubiliant
as a nameThe Penguin book of Hindu names for boys
Saetta
as a nameIl grande libro dei nomi per bebè. Significato, origini, curiosità. Oltre 7000 nomi per bambine e bambini Significato,…
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)
- Karin Dorb. 1938DEGerman actress (1938-2017)
- Petra Kellyb. 1947DEnot in their usual nameGerman politician and activist (1947-1992)
- Karin Büttner-Janzb. 1952DEEast German artistic gymnast (born 1952)
- Karin Fossumb. 1954NONorwegian writer
- Karin Konovalb. 1961USAmerican actress
- Karin Keller-Sutterb. 1963CHSwiss politician
- Karin Kneisslb. 1965ATAustrian diplomat, journalist and politician
- Karin Viardb. 1966FRFrench actress
- Victoria Silvstedtb. 1974SEnot in their usual nameSwedish model, actress, singer, and television personality
- Sabine Hossenfelderb. 1976DEnot in their usual nameGerman theoretical physicist
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 96 sources across 44 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 146K | #15 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 60K | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 31K | #131 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 14K | #45 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 10K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 5.4K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 5.3K | #3,235 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 5.2K | #2,617 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024) | 2024 | 4.2K | #1,301 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 1991 | 2K | #1,610 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 136 | #2,617 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 44 | — |
Reference works 6
- 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
- Where does the name Karin come from?
- Somali: town on the Gulf of Aden; also a short form of Katherine. Recorded by African Names.
- What does the name Karin mean?
- In English, A female given name from Danish [in turn from Ancient Greek Αἰκατερῑ́νη (Aikaterī́nē)], variant of Karen.
- What are other forms of the name Karin?
- In the etymology graph, Karen, Catherine and Kathy are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Cathrine and Catharina.
- In which country does Karin have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 237 thousand people named Karin in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled karin.
- Where is Karin most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Karin is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 70 people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
- Is Karin a male or female name?
- Karin 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.
- How common is the name Karin?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 146,129 people named Karin, about 1 in 70 residents.
- How common is Karin compared with other names?
- In Germany, Karin is the 58th most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Karin?
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/karinThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Karin” — the 58th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.