Careen
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: To heave a ship down on one side so as to expose the other, in order to clean it of barnacles and weed, or to repair it below the water line
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kəɹiːn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Careen is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GYGuyana1 in 375K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 830K
- NLNetherlands1 in 2.2M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 19 (measured from records)
- 1 in 375K (inferred from the name graph)
401 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Of recent origin and uncertain derivation. Its first appearance seems to have been in Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind (1936), where it is borne by one of the sisters of Scarlett O’Hara. CAREY The name may represent a combination of Cara with the diminutive suffix -een (of Irish origin, as in Maureen), or it may be an altered form of Corinne or Carina.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Careen is read(measured from records)
Careen 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.
- English59%
To heave a ship down on one side so as to expose the other, in order to clean it of barnacles and weed, or to repair it below the water line.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Swahili22%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Careen in Swahili.
- Spanish5.5%
inflection of carear:
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Careen 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 | 401 | 1 in 830K | 376 | Careen | 19 |
| NL Netherlands | 8 | 1 in 2.2M | 8 | — | 1 |
| SE Sweden | 4 | 1 in 2.6M | 4 | — | — |
| GY Guyana | 2 | 1 in 375K | 2 | — | — |
| CR Costa Rica | 1 | 1 in 5.1M | 1 | — | 2 |
401 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; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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)
Careen 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.
Of recent origin and uncertain derivation. Its first appearance seems to have been in Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind (1936), where it is borne by one of the sisters of Scarlett O’Hara. CAREY The name may represent a combination of Cara with the diminutive suffix -een (of Irish origin, as in Maureen), or it may be an altered form of Corinne or Carina.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
English: of recent origin and uncertain derivation. Its first appearance seems to have been in Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone with the Wind (1936), where it is borne by one of the sisters of Scarlett O'Hara (the other being Sue Ellen). The name may represent a combination of CARA with the hypocoristic suffix - een (of Irish origin; cf. MAUREEN ), or it may be an altered form of CARINA .
as a word
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)
- Careen Inglestoryboard artist, director and animator
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 21 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 376 | #24,147 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 25 | #24,147 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1962 | 10 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1976 | 9 | — |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 8 | #25,660 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1977 | 8 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1975 | 8 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1967 | 8 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1985 | 7 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1980 | 7 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1979 | 7 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1978 | 7 | — |
Reference works 1
- 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
- Where does the name Careen come from?
- Of recent origin and uncertain derivation. Its first appearance seems to have been in Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind (1936), where it is borne by one of the sisters of Scarlett O’Hara. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- How do you pronounce Careen?
- A machine transcription gives /kəɹiːn/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Careen mean?
- In English, To heave a ship down on one side so as to expose the other, in order to clean it of barnacles and weed, or to repair it below the water line.
- Is Careen a male or female name?
- Careen 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.
- What are other forms of the name Careen?
- In the etymology graph, Carreen is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Careen have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 401 people named Careen, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled careen.
- Where is Careen most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Careen is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 375 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Careen?
- In the United States, the national register counted 401 people named Careen in 2020, about 1 in 830 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Careen?
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/careenThe 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, “Careen”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.