The English name Carolyn is derived from French Caroline, which ultimately goes back to the Germanic name Karl for ‘free man’.
Carolyn is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
The name Carolyn 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, Carolyn ranks 811. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 2 were named Carolyn. In total, there are currently 545,605 people – children, adults and seniors – named Carolyn living in the United States, which is approximately 0.16 % of the entire population.
The name Carolyn belongs to the USA like the Constitution, baseball and the White House. Why? Well, quite simply, Carolyn is one of only 432 girls names that have been given in the USA in every single year since the beginning of the official name statistics and thus since 1880. However, of course, the name was not equally widespread in all 143 years – the most popular it was far back in the last century: In 1942 Carolyn was one of the top 10 most popular baby girl names in the entire United States - ranking #10 on our SmartGenius baby name charts.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Carolyn was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 1942, when the name Carolyn was at the height of its popularity, 20,038 newborns were named Carolyn by their parents - in 2022, by contrast, the name was given only 192 times and Carolyn occupied place 1,133 in our ranking of the most popular girls names.
Carolyn is one of the most common names in the U.S. – in all states combined, 545,502 women would currently turn around if you called out CAROLYN really loud. Across all states and age groups, this lands Carolyn on position 50 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top female names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above. With so many women named Carolyn, it’s no surprise that the name is widely used in every single state in the U.S., but would you have guessed that it’s especially popular in Arkansas? Here, 0,756% of all female residents bear the name Carolyn – that is a total of 12,352 women with this popular name and no other state has as many women named Carolyn relative to its population. But that’s not all the popularity: in Arkansas Carolyn belongs to the top 10 of all womens names – the 12,352 elevate their name up to place #10 in the SmartGenius ranking of the most common female names for Arkansas.
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 seven letters, the name Carolyn has a typical length for first names in the US. In fact, 26% of all common first names consist of exactly seven letters. 52% of all first names are shorter, while 22% have eight letters or more. 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 Carolyn 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 Carolyn, you can simply say:
Cat
Apple
Rocket
Orange
Lion
Yoyo
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Carolyn
Carolyn
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
C
A
R
O
L
Y
N
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
O
L
Y
N
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. Carolyn sounds like this:
