Carls
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Patronymischer Genitiv zu Rufname Karl, Bearer count: 605
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈkɑɹɫz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Carls is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 340K(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 83K
- SESweden1 in 111K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 176 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 83K (inferred from the name graph)
979 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
Patronymischer Genitiv zu Rufname Karl, Bearer count: 605.
Sources 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Carls 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 | 979 | 1 in 340K | 979 | Carls | 176 |
| DE Germany | ≈960 est. | ≈1 in 83K | listed | — | 3 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈380 est. | ≈1 in 149K | — | Carls | 18 |
| BR Brazil | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 1.2M | 1.1K | — | 1 |
| PH Philippines | ≈100 est. | ≈1 in 1.1M | — | Carls | 21 |
| SE Sweden | 92 | 1 in 111K | 92 | Carls | 9 |
| CH Switzerland | ≈69 est. | ≈1 in 122K | — | Carls | 9 |
979 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 — Surname Frequency 2010; IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); the dfa-band-2 register. 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)
Carls is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, zu Rufname Karl; 605 Belege
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
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)
- Dorothea Carlsb. 1876DEHolocaust victim (born 1876)
- Rolf Carlsb. 1885DEGerman admiral (1885–1945)
- Hans Carlsb. 1886DEGerman priest (1886–1952)
- Peter Carlsb. 1937DEpaleontologist
- Konrad Kittnerb. 1962DEnot in their usual nameGerman musician and publisher
- Jonas Carlsb. 1997DEGerman association football player
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 18 sources across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 979 | #25,295 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 957 | #24,491 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 826 | #30,311 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 215 | #34,640 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 92 | #7,731 |
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 2 | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- How do you pronounce Carls?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɑɹɫz/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Carls mean?
- Recorded meaning: Patronymischer Genitiv zu Rufname Karl, Bearer count: 605.
- In which country does Carls have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 979 people named Carls, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled carls.
- How common is the name Carls?
- In the United States, the national register counted 979 people named Carls in 2010, about 1 in 340 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Carls?
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/carlsThe 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, “Carls”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.