Karl is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
Karl is a well-known name in the US, but is still special. It is currently only given to every ten thousandth boy, and therefore ranks at 1149 in the SmartGenius statistics. This means there are 1,148 boys names that are more common, but also tens of thousands that are much rarer. In the entire USA, approximately 94,075 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Karl. That is 0.03 % of all living Americans.
For more than 140 years, parents decide to name their son Karl annualy. This means that there have been boys named Karl who witnessed the first Labor Day parade in the U.S. or followed Albert Einstein's career. The name has 'always been there', but never ranked in the top 100, and thus men named Karl have consistently been special. A small flight of popularity was experienced by the name way back in the last century and in one particular year, parents liked Karl even more than any other time: in 1964, it holds its present record at rank #131 in the list of the most popular boys' names.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Karl was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Karl has never been ranked higher than #131. In 2022, he rivaled the 1,311 names that preceded him on the list. In total, 127 boys named Karl were born in this year. For comparison: 30 years earlier, in 1992, when possibly the parents of the now very young Karl were born, there have been 737 newborns who received this name.
Everyone knows him, everyone loves him and still he’s different from the mainstream: Karl occurs in every single state of the U.S. This may sound quite unspectacular at first, but in fact, of the nearly 50,000 different male first names that occur in the USA, only 386 are recorded in each individual state, so the name Karl is definitely something very special. However, at the same time, since the name does not appear in the top 100 most common first names in any single state, Karl is not one of those names that everyone encounters in his neighbourhood, but stands out from the crowd, captures attention and is something special without being strange or unknown. From Alaska to Florida, a total of 94,031 men and boys of all generations bear the name Karl – that is one in 1,775. However, there are considerable regional differences – the name is far more popular than average in Wisconsin, where one in 400 men and boys is called Karl, while it is particularly rare in Nevada, where you have to ask an average of 5,388 men for their name to get Karl as an answer once.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter K is a real popular first letter for boys’ names. That’s because 7.9% of all common boys’ names in the US begin with this letter. Only the first letters J, A and D are more common for boys' names.
With four letters, the name Karl 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.
That means that if 7.9% of all boys' names start with a K, this initial letter occurs more than twice as often as all 26 letters on average. Interesting detail: of all the boys’ names that begin with a K, Kenneth is the most common.
If your name is Karl 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 Karl, you can simply say:
Koala
Apple
Rocket
Lion
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Karl
Karl
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
K
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.
K
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. Karl sounds like this:
