Karls
surname · Latin script
Meaning: German and Dutch; 1. variant of Karas
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkɑɹɫz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Karls is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 268K(measured from records)
- CNChina≈1 in 22K
- SESweden1 in 71K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 217 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 22K (inferred from the name graph)
≈65,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
China, 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)
German and Dutch; 1. variant of Karas. 2. from Karius, a reduced form of the personal name Makarios (see Macario).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Karls 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈65,000 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Karls | 1 |
| US United States | 1,242 | 1 in 268K | 1.2K | Karls | 217 |
| DE Germany | ≈530 est. | ≈1 in 150K | listed | Karls | 66 |
| IT Italy | ≈380 est. | ≈1 in 164K | — | Karls | 1 |
| SE Sweden | 144 | 1 in 71K | 144 | Karls | 9 |
| FI Finland | 49 | 1 in 114K | 49 | — | 1 |
| LV Latvia | ≈14 est. | ≈1 in 132K | 43 | — | 2 |
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; the dfa-band-2 register; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population 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)
Karls 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.
In German, Patronymischer Genitiv zu Rufname Karl, Bearer count: 192.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
In Danish, indefinite genitive singular of karl
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)
- Theodore Karlsb. 1833USAmerican architect (1833–1895)
- Tommy Karlsb. 1961SECanoe racer
- Karen KarlsUSpolitician
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 23 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.2K | #21,144 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.2K | #22,776 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.1K | #22,304 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 144 | #5,420 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 49 | #23,106 |
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 2 | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Karls come from?
- German and Dutch; 1. variant of Karas. 2. from Karius, a reduced form of the personal name Makarios (see Macario). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Karls?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɑɹɫz/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Karls mean?
- Recorded meaning: German and Dutch; 1. variant of Karas.
- In which country does Karls have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 65 thousand people named Karls in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled karls.
- How common is the name Karls?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,242 people named Karls in 2010, about 1 in 268 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Karls?
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/karlsThe 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, “Karls”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.