Carla is the female form of Carl, a Germanic name that means ‘free man’. The names Charles and [Carlene], for example, have the same origin.
Carla is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
The name Carla 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 girls names, Carla ranks 857. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 2 were named Carla. In the entire USA, approximately 145,332 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Carla. That is 0.04 % of all living Americans.
#75 - this is the highest position Carla has ever reached. Most names never manage to reach such high popularity in even one of the 143 years of records.The last time Carla reached this top position was in the last century, in 1966, when 4,525 newborn girls were named Carla. But as our statistics show, Carla has not always been a popular name: in some years of records, lastly in the year 1907, it was either not given to newborns at all or less than 5 times (a name is only included in the official statistics if it is given at least 5 times in a year). Even today it's not at the peak of its popularity, nevertheless Carla is still the first choice of some parents every year as the most beautiful first name for their newborn daughter.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Carla was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, 291 newborns were given the name Carla, making them rank #834. Although the name Carla was more popular in the last century than it is today, it is still common and for some parents it is the name of choice for their daughter. So the chances of an encounter with a young Carla are still there in our contemporary times.
The name Carla may not be in the top rankings of the most popular girls’ names, but it is one of the few female given names, along with only 536 others, that can be found in every single state in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida and from California to New York. Of course, the name occurs more frequently in some states than in others – and Carla is apparently especially popular in New Mexico. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular women’s names here either, one in 596 women in New Mexico is called Carla. In total, that’s 1,326 women who feel addressed when the name Carla is shouted loudly across New Mexico and who ensure that their name makes it to #169 in our SmartGenius ranking of the most common female names in this nice state. If you asked all women in the entire U.S. for their first name, you would hear Carla as the answer a total of 145,326 times. This places Carla at #241 in our SmartGenius statistics for the most popular women’s names in the whole of the USA. This is true for all currently living women across all states and age groups – the recent popularity of the name Carla as a baby name is, of course, a bit 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 girls' names. This is because 6.0% of all common girls’ names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of girls' names, by the way, are A, S and M.
With five letters, the name Carla is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five 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.
That means that with 6.0% of all girls' names that begin with a C, this first letter is much more common than the average of all letters. And which girls’ name beginning with C do you think is the most common in the US? The answer is... Carol.
If your name is Carla 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 Carla, you can simply say:
Cat
Apple
Rocket
Lion
Apple
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Carla
Carla
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
C
A
R
L
A
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
A
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. Carla sounds like this:
