Carles
Masculine · “a free man”
Carles is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 681 boys against 5 girls since 1880.
Carles is the ordinary Catalan form of Charles, and it is also what an American clerk produces by dropping a letter. The record holds both, and it holds this spelling almost entirely for sons. The language behind the first reading spent forty years being treated as though it did not exist.
How old is the name Carles?
Carles first appears in US birth records in 1912 — 113 years ago. The typical Carles alive today was born around 1946, making them about 79 years old. About 300 people named Carles are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Carles most popular?
Carles peaked in 1928, reaching #1707 nationally. See the whole 1928 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Karl to Carles
The story of Carles
Catalan is not a dialect of Spanish. It is a separate Romance language, closer in several respects to Occitan and southern French than to Castilian, with its own literature going back to the thirteenth century and something like ten million speakers. Under Franco it was banned from public life: not spoken on radio, not taught in schools, not printed in newspapers, not usable in court, and names had to be registered in Castilian forms — so a child called Carles was entered as Carlos. Signs were changed. The language survived in kitchens and in exile publishing, and after the dictatorship it came back into schools and administration within a generation, which is unusual for a language that has been through that. The name in its Catalan spelling is a small piece of that recovery.
Meaningscholars disagree
a free man
The Germanic word behind the whole family described a free man of no particular rank, which is the opposite of what the name came to suggest. Whether a given American family meant the Catalan name or was respelling the English one is not recorded, and the record holds it for children of both sexes.
How the name formed
- Karl
- Carolus
- Carles
Related forms: Carles · Carlos · Charles · Charles
Pronouncing Carles
KAR-less
Two syllables with the stress at the front in Catalan. American readers who treat it as a respelling of Charles say CHARLZ instead, and both are heard.
Nicknames for Carles
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
- 1912
- Most boys named
- 192820 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1707reached in 1928
- Change vs 2017
- 0.0%6 in 2021, from 6
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.
Carles in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Carles in Catalan — same name
- Carlos in Spanish — same name
- Charles in English — same name
- Charles in French — same name
Carless among us
people named Carles are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Carles sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- It is the genuine Catalan form rather than an approximation of one.
- Charlie is available as a familiar form from the English side.
- Six letters with no silent ones make it easy to write.
- Charles and Carlos will both be written for it.
- The two possible readings sound completely different, so the name is said two ways.
- The spelling is recorded for a few girls, but nearly every child with it is a boy.
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What they receive
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Carles
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Carless are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 300 people named Carles are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Carles in 2025?
- Carles is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Carles with classmates?
- Carles will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More C names
The most-given names starting with C, all years combined.
Charles#48 · Christopher#68 · Carl#1132 · Christian#96 · Caleb#58 · Cameron#76 · Carlos#150 · Clarence#1499
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Carles? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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