Carly
- Pronunciation
- [Car-ly]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Little And Womanly. Alternate Spelling: Carlie.
- Origin
- Latin
About the Name Carly
Carly is the English short form of Carolyn/Caroline (see separate entries on Caroline and Carolyn for the Old Germanic Karl etymology meaning "free man" — through the Latin Carolus to the Italian-Spanish elaborated form Carolina). Carly has been used as a casual diminutive in English-speaking countries since at least the early 20th century.
The name's overwhelming modern cultural anchor is American singer Carly Simon (born 1945, the iconic American singer-songwriter whose 1972 song "You're So Vain" became one of the foundational American songs of the 1970s) and American singer Carly Rae Jepsen (born 1985, the Canadian-American singer whose 2012 song "Call Me Maybe" became one of the most-iconic songs of the 2010s).
Carly held a US top-100 girls' rank from 1985 through 2005 — about two decades of consistent American popularity. The name has receded since but remains in steady use today, currently sitting in the US top 300 girls' rank. The name's appeal is its compact warm classical-American register — two short syllables, soft consonants, instantly readable, and the in-built Carolyn-Caroline-classical pedigree. The strong Carly Simon and Carly Rae Jepsen cultural anchors maintain the name's contemporary relevance. The name reads as both classical-vintage and contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since Carly is itself a nickname-shape — the rare Car (back-end shortening) and Carlie each occasionally appear; the longer formal Caroline, Carolyn, or Charlotte are sometimes used as Carly's official-document version. International forms include Carolina (Italian/Spanish), Caroline (French/English), Karoline (German/Danish), and the broader Charles/Karl/Carlo family.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Carly
US Popularity History (2000–2024)
Annual US births named Carly by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2000 with 1,961 girls named Carly (girl rank #169 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2024, ranked #873 for girls (308 US births). That's 704 places below its 2000 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Carly Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Carly the strongest states are New Hampshire, West Virginia, Iowa.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Hampshire | #181 | 25 |
| 2 | West Virginia | #266 | 28 |
| 3 | Iowa | #336 | 84 |
| 4 | Mississippi | #353 | 27 |
| 5 | Nebraska | #355 | 39 |
| 6 | Kansas | #403 | 52 |
| 7 | Nevada | #429 | 29 |
| 8 | Kentucky | #430 | 100 |
| 9 | Minnesota | #443 | 138 |
| 10 | Ohio | #471 | 233 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | #876 | 343 |
| 2 | Texas | #788 | 370 |
| 3 | Washington | #720 | 70 |
| 4 | Florida | #716 | 195 |
| 5 | New York | #701 | 245 |
| 6 | Arizona | #672 | 86 |
| 7 | Illinois | #652 | 121 |
| 8 | Georgia | #650 | 117 |
| 9 | Colorado | #640 | 72 |
| 10 | Virginia | #629 | 105 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Carly in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carleen | Feminine Form Of Charles Manly | Female | Irish |
Famous People Named Carly
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Carly.
- Carly Simon — Pop Singer (1945)
Looking for names like Carly?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Carly to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Carly against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).