Carolyn
- Pronunciation
- [Ca-ro-lyn]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Joy Also Feminine Variant Of Charles Meaning Manly
- Origin
- English
About the Name Carolyn
Carolyn is an English variant of Caroline, which is itself the feminine form of the Latin Carolus (Charles), derived from the Old High German karl meaning "free man" or "strong man." The -yn ending of Carolyn represents a mid-twentieth-century American respelling preference — adjusting the French -ine ending toward a more American phonetic spelling — while the underlying meaning and heritage remain the same. Carolyn can thus be read as carrying both the "joy" traditionally ascribed to English Carol and the "strength" or "freedom" of the Germanic masculine root that underpins the entire Charles-Carol-Caroline family of names.
The name first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1927 and rose to its national peak of #10 in 1942, accumulating more than 474,000 recorded top-1000 births across its 93-year chart run — one of the longer unbroken chart presences of any mid-century name. The name maintained a steady low-level presence well into the twenty-first century: ranked #865 in 2018, #936 in 2019, and #947 in 2020, its last year in the top-1000.
Carolyn carries the graceful, measured quality of its Caroline lineage with a slightly more informal American feel — the -yn spelling giving it a distinctive mid-century American character that Caroline and Carol do not share. Its four syllables make it formal and unhurried, a name that sounds complete without a nickname. The only recorded variant is Carrie.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Carolyn
US Popularity History (1927–2020)
Annual US births named Carolyn by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1947 with 20,741 girls named Carolyn (girl rank #15 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2020, ranked #947 for girls (270 US births). That's 932 places below its 1947 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 Carolyn 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 Carolyn the strongest states are Mississippi, Iowa, Kentucky.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mississippi | #479 | 18 |
| 2 | Iowa | #565 | 16 |
| 3 | Kentucky | #582 | 36 |
| 4 | Wisconsin | #646 | 61 |
| 5 | Pennsylvania | #655 | 153 |
| 6 | Ohio | #679 | 119 |
| 7 | South Carolina | #681 | 56 |
| 8 | Alabama | #699 | 40 |
| 9 | Oklahoma | #705 | 27 |
| 10 | Utah | #714 | 20 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas | #1,062 | 142 |
| 2 | Florida | #989 | 61 |
| 3 | Illinois | #981 | 35 |
| 4 | New York | #924 | 51 |
| 5 | Washington | #907 | 27 |
| 6 | Michigan | #892 | 52 |
| 7 | North Carolina | #860 | 75 |
| 8 | Virginia | #850 | 50 |
| 9 | Louisiana | #828 | 27 |
| 10 | Indiana | #827 | 52 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Carolyn in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carrie | Abbreviation Of Carol And Caroline From The Masculine Charles Meaning Manly | Female | English |
Looking for names like Carolyn?
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 Carolyn to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Carolyn against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).