Karolyn

given name · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/ˈkæɹəɫɪn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Karolyn is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Laos it is the 22nd most common given name.

rarermore common
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 552as Carolyn(inferred from the name graph)
  • ESSpain1 in 573as Carla
  • BRBrazil1 in 697as Carla

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 Karolyn 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.

United States (measured from records)

384,056 named Carolyn, 2020

#243 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

5 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
595 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 130 (inferred from the name graph)

Poland, as Karolina

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

CarolynLatin(measured from records)
קרוליןHebrew(measured from records)
คาโรลThai(measured from records)
КарлотаCyrillic(measured from records)
ΚαρλοταGreek(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Carolyn in US United States, GB United Kingdom, NZ New Zealand, Carlota in BR Brazil, ES Spain, Carolin in PL Poland, SE Sweden and Carolina in LA Laos.

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

No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.

Sources 1

Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Karolyn 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.

Where Karolyn is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#106384,056as Carolyn1 in 866384KCarolyn595
BR Brazil—303,790as Carla1 in 697327KCarlota77
PL Poland—295,015as Karolina1 in 130295KCarolin7
GB United Kingdom#154≈92,000 est.≈1 in 7186Carolyn288
ES Spain#35787,268as Carla1 in 57387KCarlota177
CZ Czechia—73,994as Karolína1 in 14574K—2
SE Sweden—21,480as Karolina1 in 47521KCarolin46
LA Laos#22≈10,000 est.≈1 in 719—Carolina11
NZ New Zealand#101≈8,900 est.≈1 in 55210Carolyn140
MD Moldova—6,827as Carolina1 in 4936.8K—14

384,056 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; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names); NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); MVČR — living population register 2017; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); e-services.md — living 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Karolyn is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Korean given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, South Korea, United Kingdom, Canada

    Also written Caroline, 카롤린

  • Polish given name19 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia

    Languages: Polish, Russian, Czech

    Also written Carolyn, Кэролин, Керолин, Кэралін

  • Finnish given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Estonia, Finland

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Kärolyn

46 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

1940195019601970Karolyn Grimes, b. 1940Karolyn Ali, b. 1944Karolyn Nelke, b. 1948Karolyn Smardz Frost, b. 1956Karolyn Kirby, b. 1961

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)

InformalHi Karolyn,

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 29 sources across 19 countries.

Official registers attesting Karolyn
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20204.9K#3,952
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022419—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—417#15,105
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2010346—
BR BrazilBrasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA)—272#11,395
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—259#21,640
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2000190—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)1946167—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)1990158—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)2000156—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)1943154—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)1941149—

Reference works 2

  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • 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

Is Karolyn a male or female name?
Karolyn 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 do you pronounce Karolyn?
A machine transcription gives /ˈkæɹəɫɪn/ (IPA) for English.
What are other forms of the name Karolyn?
In the etymology graph, Carolyn, Carolina and Carla are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Karolyn have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 384 thousand people named Carolyn, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Karolyn most common?
No national register we hold counts the spelling Karolyn itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Poland's: the national register counts about 1 in 130 people named Karolina.
How common is the name Karolyn?
In the United States, the national register counted 384,056 people named Carolyn in 2020, about 1 in 866 residents.
How common is Karolyn compared with other names?
In the United States, Karolyn is the 106th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Karolyn?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/karolyn

The 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, “Karolyn” — the 106th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Karolyn parses inside a full name →