Carlyle
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Border name meaning ‘from Carlisle’; recorded with Adam of Carlyle in 1199
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈkɑɹˌɫaɪɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Carlyle is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 96K(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 547K
- DKDenmark1 in 1.5M
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
- 49 (measured from records)
- 1 in 96K (inferred from the name graph)
3,476 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Border name meaning ‘from Carlisle’; recorded with Adam of Carlyle in 1199.
Sources 1
- Scottish Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Carlyle 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 | 3,476 | 1 in 96K | 3.5K | Carlyle | 35 |
| NO Norway | 10 | 1 in 547K | 10 | — | — |
| ES Spain | 6 | 1 in 8.3M | 6 | — | 1 |
| CH Switzerland | 5 | 1 in 1.7M | 5 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | 4 | 1 in 1.5M | 4 | — | — |
3,476 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; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); 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)
Carlyle is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
A Border name which signifies ‘from Carlisle’, and thus like Inglis, originally English or quite possibly north British, Carlisle having been a fortress in the ancient sub-kingdom of Rheged. Adam of Carlyle is recorded as owning land in Annandale, 1199. Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), born in Ecclefechan, son of a stonemason, was a historian of immense influence in the 19th century.
as a nameScottish Surnames
In English, An English and Scottish habitational surname, a variant of Carlisle.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, city, IL
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In enm, alternative form of Carlele (“Carlisle”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Thomas Carlyleb. 1795GBScottish essayist, historian and philosopher (1795–1881)
- Jane Welsh Carlyleb. 1801LBScottish writer (1801–1866)
- John Carlyleb. 1801GBScottish physician and writer
- Florence Carlyleb. 1864CACanadian artist (1864-1923)
- Edward Irving Carlyleb. 1871GBBritish author and historian (1871-1952)
- Grace Carlyleb. 1877USAmerican actress
- Richard Carlyleb. 1914CAAmerican actor (1914–2009)
- Randy Carlyleb. 1956CACanadian ice hockey player and coach
- Robert Carlyleb. 1961GBScottish actor
- Buddy Carlyleb. 1977USAmerican baseball 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 42 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.5K | #9,357 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.3K | #9,365 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.3K | #9,224 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 10 | #57,144 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 6 | #154,812 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 5 | #101,952 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 4 | #73,476 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Carlyle mean, and where does it come from?
- Border name meaning ‘from Carlisle’; recorded with Adam of Carlyle in 1199. Recorded by Scottish Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Carlyle?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɑɹˌɫaɪɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Carlyle have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 3.5 thousand people named Carlyle, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled carlyle.
- Where is Carlyle most common?
- Carlyle is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 96 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Carlyle?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,476 people named Carlyle in 2010, about 1 in 96 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Carlyle?
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/carlyleThe 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, “Carlyle”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.