9BabyNames Baby names with meanings & US popularity data Italiano

Kari vs Olivia

How Kari and Olivia compare across 146 years of US Social Security Administration baby-name records — popularity history, peak years, current rank, and which name overtook which.

Open Name Tournament

Kari

Female · French

Meaning: Joyful Song

Olivia

Female · Romanian

Meaning: Olive Tree

US Popularity History — Side-by-Side

Annual US births named Kari (girls) vs Olivia (girls), from US Social Security Administration national records.

Source: US Social Security Administration. Names appearing fewer than 5 times per year are suppressed by SSA.

Quick Stats

Metric Kari Olivia
Peak year (most US births) 2000 — 293 girls 2014 — 19,836 girls
Peak rank #783 #2
Most recent rank (2002) #976 (227 births) #1 (13,544 births)
Total US births since 1880 773 512,241
Last 10 years (1993–2002) 773 170,562

Peak comparison takeaway

At its all-time peak, Olivia reached 19,836 US births in 2014 — 19,543 more than Kari's peak count.

Strongest States — Last 10 Years

States where each name ranked highest, from SSA's state-level dataset. Lower average rank = name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name list.

Kari — top 5 states

#StateAvg rankBirths
1 Maryland #785 28
2 Alabama #807 17
3 Ohio #835 106
4 Indiana #869 37
5 Pennsylvania #910 40

Olivia — top 5 states

#StateAvg rankBirths
1 Illinois #1 5,942
2 Washington #1 3,650
3 Connecticut #1 1,826
4 New York #1 9,099
5 Oklahoma #1 1,933

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Data & methodology

Source: US Social Security Administration national baby names dataset 1880–2025 (CC0 public domain). Names with fewer than 5 occurrences in a given year are suppressed by SSA. State-level coverage runs 1910–2025. Crossover detection compares annual birth counts (not ranks) for each year both names appear. Methodology: see full notes. More comparisons →