Caralee
Feminine · “dear one”
The doubled e at the end of Caralee is doing one job and doing it completely: it fixes the last syllable as a long ee, which a single e or a y would leave open. American naming used that device constantly in the middle of the twentieth century, attaching it to short front elements and producing a whole family of names that all end the same way and rhyme by design.
How old is the name Caralee?
Caralee first appears in US birth records in 1929 — 96 years ago. The typical Caralee alive today was born around 1973, making them about 52 years old. About 700 people named Caralee are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Caralee most popular?
Caralee peaked in 1946, reaching #2153 nationally. Today it ranks #14942, 12,789 places below that high. See the whole 1946 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From carus to Caralee
The story of Caralee
Lee became one of the most flexible elements in American naming in the twentieth century — a complete name for either sex, a middle name for hundreds of thousands, and a suffix attachable to anything. Caralee belongs to the last of those uses. It appears in the record from 1929 and peaked in 1946, alongside Ardelle, Rosalee, Bobbielee and a great many others built the same way. What holds the group together is a rhythm rather than an ancestry.
Meaningscholars disagree
dear one, and a clearing
Cara means dear in Italian and Spanish and friend in Irish. Lee is the Old English leah, a clearing in woodland, by way of the surname and the standing name. The two halves have nothing to do with each other, and the compound is American rather than descended from anything.
How the name formed
- carus
- Cara
- Caralee
Pronouncing Caralee
KAIR-uh-lee
Three syllables, stress on the first with a secondary weight on the last. The doubled e guarantees the final vowel, which is the whole reason it is there.
Nicknames for Caralee
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1929
- Most girls named
- 197127 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2153reached in 1946
- Change vs 2018
- −37.5%5 in 2025, from 8
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Caralees among us
people named Caralee are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 321,453 born in 2025 was named Caralee
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Rudy test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Caralee's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Rudy climbed just as high around 1912, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Rudy's path sketches the road Caralee is walking now.
Caralee sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Caralee beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Caralee in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Both halves are complete standing names, so it shortens two ways.
- The ending is unambiguous, which the y-spellings of the same sound are not.
- Three syllables of soft consonants that sit well after most surnames.
- Caralie, Caraleigh and Caralea all appear, so the spelling has to be given.
- It belongs to a mid-century American generation and carries that flavor.
- The two halves have nothing to do with each other, so there is no single meaning.
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What they receive
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Caralee
Feminine · #14942 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Caralees are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 700 people named Caralee are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Caralee in 2025?
- Caralee ranks #14942 among US girl names in 2025, with 5 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Caralee?
- About 1 in every 321,453 US girls born in 2025 was named Caralee — 5 in all.
- Will my child share the name Caralee with classmates?
- Caralee will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Caralee
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Hester#14942 · Lyda#14942 · Zula#14942 · Zona#14942 · Ula#14942 · Belva#14942 · Lucetta#14942 · Leala#14942
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Caralee? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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