Carla

given name · Portuguese · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Carla is a given name, most frequently recorded in Argentina. In Portugal it is the 28th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Portuguese and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Feminine form of Carl/Charles, from Germanic karl, 'free man'.

rarermore common
  • PTPortugal1 in 168◐
  • ECEcuador1 in 359
  • ESSpain1 in 573

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈652K ●

across 12 countries

#377 ●

of 16M given names

Sources
402 ●

1.2M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 358 ◐

Costa Rica

Meaning & origin●

Feminine form of Carl/Charles, from Germanic karl, 'free man'.

Sources 1

  • Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Carla is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
AR Argentina#212712,064387K rec.—109Carla153
BR Brazil#113303,790200K rec.1 in 697327KCarla223
US United States—144,540178K rec.1 in 2.3K145KCarla402
CL Chile#157112,75711K rec.—75Carla133
PE Peru#34496,91775K rec.——Carla100
ES Spain#12687,26864K rec.1 in 57387KCarla188
MX Mexico#41981,12153K rec.—424Carla207
VE Venezuela#38465,93928K rec.——Carla79
PT Portugal#2849,83619K rec.—listedCarla185
EC Ecuador#34447,098△951 rec.1 in 35947KCarla65
PH Philippines#53840,62119K rec.——Carla104
IT Italy#24735,45333K rec.—139Carla157

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • Portuguese4.8M52%
  • English1.9M21%
  • Spanish1.6M17%
  • French193K2%
  • 117K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Portuguese4,802,12752%
English1,931,68821%
Spanish1,571,70617%
French192,5752%
117,0451%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Carla is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name2.3M records spelled Carla31 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, United Kingdom, Netherlands

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Carlà, Carlá, Cärla, Carla', Carlâ

  • French given name204K records spelled Carla4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Belgium, Spain

    Also written Cãrlã, Carlà

  • a separate given name134K records spelled Carla3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Italy

    Also written Carlà, Carlá

  • Catalan given name87K records spelled Carla2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, Andorra, Argentina

    Also written Carlá

  • Czech given name17K records spelled Carla37 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Czechia, Croatia, United States, Poland

    Languages: Czech, Croatian, Polish

    Also written Karla, Карла, Karľa, Ćârlâ, Cárlá

  • Indonesian given name11K records spelled Carla4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Philippines, United States, Spain

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Čãřľã, Cärlä

  • English given name8.4K records spelled Carla188 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Australia

    Languages: English, Spanish, German

    Also written Carolyn, Carlota, Carolin, Karolyn, Carolina

89 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Carla is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, Feminine form of Carl, occasionally used in Ireland.

    as a nameIrish first names

  • Feminine form of Carl. Carlotta ° Italian form of Charlotte, occasionally used in the English-speaking world.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • A feminine form of Carl, occasionally used in Ireland.

    as a nameIrish first names

  • In English, A female given name from the Germanic languages borrowed from Italian or German.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Spanish, a female given name, masculine equivalent Carlos

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Over time●

02K4K6K1900195020005.8K · 1962

Show as table
Carla in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1890–2025
Yearrecords
18905
18926
19005
19018
19026
19035
19055
190610
19087
19098
19108
191117
19125
191313
191417
191523
191621
191720
191831
191916
192026
192129
192219
192330
192436
192539
192672
192782
192893
1929124
1930153
1931165
1932197
1933175
1934200
1935214
1936244
1937256
1938311
1939347
1940440
1941455
1942554
1943642
1944722
1945862
19461,201
19471,569
19481,543
19491,498
19501,753
19512,172
19522,565
19532,760
19542,889
19553,066
19563,320
19573,470
19583,502
19593,935
19604,375
19615,817
19625,820
19635,264
19645,378
19654,781
19664,508
19674,185
19683,813
19693,964
19704,214
19713,556
19723,083
19732,686
19742,571
19752,314
19762,249
19772,097
19782,102
19791,969
19801,833
19811,789
19821,759
19831,528
19841,454
19851,397
19861,344
19871,198
19881,086
19891,067
19901,092
19911,009
19921,014
1993882
1994798
1995764
1996769
1997725
1998668
1999679
2000707
2001674
2002764
2003648
2004629
2005585
2006610
2007579
2008531
2009440
2010368
2011368
2012371
2013300
2014320
2015318
2016323
2017279
2018255
2019253
2020245
2021221
2022291
2023267
2024254
2025223

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 126 years between 1890–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

175018001850190019502000Princess Maria Carolina, Duchess of Berry, b. 1798Infanta Marie Anne of Portugal, b. 1861Carla Cassola, b. 1947Carla Bruni, b. 1967Carla Gugino, b. 1971Carolina Klüft, b. 1983Carla Juri, b. 1985Carolina Kostner, b. 1987Karol G, b. 1991Carolina Marín, b. 1993

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence●

Attested in 119 sources across 60 countries.

Official registers attesting Carla
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—327K#149
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022304K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—302K#97
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020145K#387
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—87K#111
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—82K#61
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)202427K#378
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202423K#92
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—11K#378
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—2.7K#207
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)20202.7K—
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—1.8K#1,106

Reference works 3

  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 1,392 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Carla?
We estimate roughly 652 thousand people bear Carla (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
In which country does Carla have the most bearers?
Carla is most frequently recorded in Argentina, where it is most often spelled carla.
How common is Carla compared with other names?
In Argentina, Carla is the 212th most common given name of 517,176 given names recorded there.
Is Carla a male or female name?
Carla is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Carla mean?
Recorded meaning: Feminine form of Carl/Charles, from Germanic karl, 'free man'.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/carla

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Carla” — the 212th most common given name in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Carla parses inside a full name →