Kari

given name · English · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Kari is a given name, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is the 48th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Finnish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: People in Cameroon and Chad; also a short form of Caroline.

rarermore common
  • FIFinland1 in 135◐
  • NONorway1 in 246
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 311

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

≈407K ●

across 10 countries

#511 ●

of 16M given names

5 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
525 ●

4.6M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 135 ◐

Finland

Spellings & scripts●

CarrieLatin · English●2.2M records
קליירHebrew · Hebrew●3K records
แคล์รThai · Thai●1 records
ΚλαιρGreek · Greek●0 records
캐리Hangul · Korean●0 records

3 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Claire in GB United Kingdom, AU Australia, PH Philippines and 10 more, Carrie in US United States, CA Canada, IT Italy and 5 more, קלייר in FR France, IL Israel and Clare in KE Kenya, ZA South Africa.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

People in Cameroon and Chad; also a short form of Caroline.

Sources 1

  • African Names

Attested across 24 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Kari is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GB United Kingdom#48664,028546K rec.—7Claire307
AU Australia#85248,551205K rec.—117Claire265
US United States#128163,2983.4M rec.1 in 2K163KCarrie525
FR France—160,095△500 rec.1 in 424160Kקלייר15
CA Canada#112108,14689K rec.—53Carrie210
PH Philippines#36959,41548K rec.——Claire141
FI Finland#75641,290△4.2K rec.1 in 13557KKari67
NO Norway#2322,263△9.9K rec.1 in 24672KKari98
IT Italy#39118,46219K rec.—1Carrie92
DE Germany#69118,45118K rec.—1Claire165
IE Ireland#7018,26915K rec.——Claire150
IN India—16,7756.7K rec.—2.8KCarrie66

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

Languages●

  • English484K37%
  • Finnish244K19%
  • Hindi189K14%
  • 88K7%
  • Norwegian76K6%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English484,40237%
Finnish244,13419%
Hindi189,17814%
87,6667%
Norwegian75,9456%

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◐

Kari is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Finnish given name271K records spelled Kari10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland, United States, India, Sweden

    Also written Kári, Kärî, Kårì, Kärí, Käri

  • a separate given name96K records spelled Kari8 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Kāri, Kārī, Kărī, Ḳârî, Kári

  • Spanish given name63K records spelled Kari25 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Mexico, Brazil, Finland

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French

    Also written Kar-I, Kaí, Kári, Kǎi, Kâi

  • a separate given name17K records spelled Kari12 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Kári, Kårï, Käri, Kâri, Kåri

  • English given name5.2K records spelled Kari89 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, German, Russian

    Also written Karie, Caria, Кари, Карі, Kary

71 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●

Kari 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, A female given name from Swedish, of recent usage, equivalent to English Carrie or Cary.

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

  • In Finnish, rock (mass of stone projecting out of water or just underwater)

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

  • In Norwegian Nynorsk, a crow (black bird of the genus Corvus)

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

  • In English, lang., Chad, Cameroon, Central

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In English, African Rep.

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

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●

05001K1.5K192019401960198020001.4K · 1962

Show as table
Kari in naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls), India, 1910–2015
Yearrecords
19101
19111
19121
19151
19168
19176
191810
191910
192033
192112
192239
192322
192435
192522
192639
192756
192841
192975
193050
193161
1932166
193372
1934154
1935141
1936179
1937178
1938172
1939173
1940161
1941211
1942324
1943229
1944327
1945311
1946335
1947518
1948136
1949100
1950324
1951291
1952409
1953191
1954369
1955492
1956425
1957522
1958743
19591,007
1960612
1961787
19621,385
1963985
19641,178
19651,019
19661,040
19671,378
1968864
1969944
19701,029
19711,009
19721,279
1973936
19741,230
19751,076
19761,129
1977921
1978901
1979857
1980272
1981944
19821,021
1983867
1984865
1985762
1986500
1987699
1988527
1989524
1990373
1991448
1992557
1993447
1994311
1995182
1996129
199790
199863
199911
20073
2008403
20095
2010412
201193
2012180
201333
2014151
2015141

IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) — 97 years between 1910–2015. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1940196019802000Peter von Bagh, b. 1943Kari Lizer, b. 1961Kari Wührer, b. 1967Kari Juusonen, b. 1967Kari Matchett, b. 1970Kari Ketonen, b. 1971Kari Byron, b. 1974Kari Traa, b. 1974Kari Wahlgren, b. 1977Kari Skogland, b. 2000

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 79 sources across 40 countries.

Official registers attesting Kari
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—72K#13
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—57K#55
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202054K#842
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—41K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)202522K—
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—4.9K#751
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—3.1K#814
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—2.8K#2,455
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20201.7K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020901#28,202
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020687#842
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000677#32,129

Reference works 5

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname 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 · 838 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Kari?
We estimate roughly 407 thousand people bear Kari (counting its spellings and scripts) across 10 countries in our records.
In which country does Kari have the most bearers?
Kari is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled claire.
Where is Kari most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kari is densest in Finland — about 1 in 135 people — even though United Kingdom holds more of our records for it.
How common is Kari compared with other names?
In the United Kingdom, Kari is the 48th most common given name of 369,273 given names recorded there.
Is Kari a male or female name?
Kari 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 Kari mean?
Recorded meaning: People in Cameroon and Chad; also a short form of Caroline.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kari

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, “Kari” — the 48th most common given name in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Kari parses inside a full name →