The name Carl is of Germanic origin and means ‘free man’. The English and French variant of this name is Charles. Many Germanic and Scandianavian kings bore the name Carl or a variant of it.
Carl is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Carl isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Carl ranks 643. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 2 were named Carl. In total, there are currently 477,183 people – children, adults and seniors – named Carl living in the United States, which is approximately 0.14 % of the entire population.
The name Carl is of Germanic origin and means ‘free man’. The English and French variant of this name is Charles. Many Germanic and Scandianavian kings bore the name Carl or a variant of it.
Carl is traditionally... common in northern Germany and Scandinavia, while Karl is more common in southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Carl von Linné (1707-1778)
He was a Swedish naturalist, biologist and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system for naming organisms. He is known as the »father of modern taxonomy« and wrote many of his works in Latin. Especially in zoology, »Linnaeus« and »Linnæus« are therefore also used as author names alongside »Linné«.
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)
Jung, often called »C. G. Jung« for short, was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. He was a successful author, illustrator and correspondent and a complex and controversial personality who is probably best known for his »autobiography« entitled »Memories, Dreams, Reflections«.
Carl Reiner (1922-2020)
The career of US actor, stand-up comedian, director, producer, book and screenwriter »Carl Reiner« lasted over seventy years. He has received numerous prizes and awards, including 11 Primetime Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humour. In 1999, he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame. In the 1950s, he worked as an actor and sketch writer and later teamed up with Mel Brooks. Together they released several cult comedy albums and films. During his life Reiner wrote more than two dozen books, mainly in his later years, and is regarded as a comedy legend, particularly in the USA.
Carl Edward Sagan (1934-1996)
Sagan was an astronomer, astrophysicist, planetary scientist, exobiologist, tv-presenter and author. He is particularly well known for his research on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, including the experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from chemical precursors by exposure to light. Sagan has published over 600 scientific papers and articles. He has also authored, co-authored or edited more than 20 books and co-authored and narrated the award-winning 1980s television series »Cosmos: A Personal Voyage«, which became the most-watched series in the history of US-American public television.
Carl XVI. Gustaf (*1946)
Carl Gustaf Folke Hubertus, or »Carl XVI Gustaf« for short, is head of the Swedish royal house of Bernadotte and King of Sweden. He became Crown Prince at the age of four and a candidate for the Swedish throne, which he ascended on 15 September 1973 following the death of his grandfather. In 1976, he married Silvia Sommerlath, the two have three children: Victoria, Carl Philip and Madeleine. Since April 2018, »Carl« has officially been the longest-reigning king in Swedish history.
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855)
The German mathematician, statistician, astronomer, geodesist, electrical engineer and physicist Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss contributed to many areas of mathematics and science. He is one of the most influential mathematicians in history and was known in his time as the »prince of mathematicians« . He was Director of the Göttingen Observatory and Professor of Astronomy for almost half a century, from 1807 until his death in 1855.
When you hear the name Carl, you might first think of people. But did you know that there are also places with the name Carl? Are you also called Carl? Maybe one day you will visit the places that are named just like you...
also called Cook Bay is the name of a narrow channel on the northern coast of South Georgia. The passage is approximately 984 feet long.
»Carl« is the name of a city in Barrow County, Georgia, USA.
Students or alumni of Carleton College, a private college in Northfield, Minnesota, informally get nicknamed »Carl«.
The »Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries« is an association of several libraries in Colorado and Wyoming. A shortform of this association is reffered to as »CARL«.
Carl is the epitome of endurance. Every year since first names have been registered in the United States, parents have come up with the idea of naming their son Carl. This means that several boys named Carl have witnessed historic events such as the first Nobel Prize ceremony, the moon landing, the release of the first cell phone, or the turn of the millennium. The first name Carl has reached its highest rank of 21 numerous times, but that was long ago before the beginning of the last century, last time in 1895. Nevertheless, the name has been in the top 100 repeatedly. This makes Carl one of the most popular names of all time.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Carl was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
There are only 386 different male names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Carl is one of them. However, Carl is not equally widespread in all states, but people in West Virginia seem to particularly fancy this name – the 10,033 men called Carl who live here are 0,655% of all male residents and push their name up to #29 in our SmartGenius statistics, easily placing it in the top 100 most common male names in West Virginia. If you look at all the states in the USA together, you can currently find as many as 477,183 people with the name Carl. Across all regions and age groups, this lands Carl on position 64 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top male names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter C is a frequent initial letter for boys’ names. This is because 5.2% of all common boys’ names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of boys' names, by the way, are J, A and D.
With four letters, the name Carl is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
With 5.2% of all boys' names that begin with a C, this first letter is thus much more common than the average of all letters. And which boys’ name beginning with C do you think is the most common in the US? The answer is... Charles.
If your name is Carl and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Carl, you can simply say:
Cat
Apple
Rocket
Lion
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Carl
Carl
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
C
A
R
L
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
C
A
R
L
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Carl sounds like this:
