Carmen
Masculine · “garden”
Carmen is given to both — 16,961 boys and 142,795 girls since 1880. See Carmen as a girl nameSee other names given to both
Carmen for a son is the Spanish Marian tradition. Nuestra Señora del Carmen — Our Lady of Mount Carmel — is a devotion given to both sexes, and the mountain's name means a garden.
How old is the name Carmen?
Carmen first appears in US birth records in 1894 — 131 years ago. The typical Carmen alive today was born around 1945, making them about 80 years old. About 7,800 people named Carmen are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Carmen most popular?
Carmen peaked in 1928, reaching #307 nationally. Today it ranks #1621, 1,314 places below that high. See the whole 1928 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From karmel to Carmen
The story of Carmen
Mount Carmel is where Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal, and the Carmelite order took its name from the hermits who settled there. Spanish and Italian Catholic naming gave Carmen and Carmelo to both sexes as Marian devotional names. Spanish-speaking families brought both to America, where masculine Carmen appears in the registers and peaked around 1918.
Meaning
garden, orchard
From the Hebrew karmel, 'garden' or 'orchard', the name of the mountain in northern Israel where the Carmelite order began. The Spanish name is a shortening of the Marian title. The Latin carmen, 'song', is a separate word that has influenced how the name is read but is not its source.
How the name formed
- karmel
- Carmelo
- Carmen
Related forms: Carmen · Carmine · Carmelo · Karmel
Pronouncing Carmen
KAR-mun
Two syllables, stress on the first. Spanish says KAR-men with a fuller final vowel.
Nicknames for Carmen
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
- 1894
- Most boys named
- 1926322 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #307reached in 1928
- Change vs 2022
- +246.7%104 in 2025, from 30
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.
Carmen in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Carmen in Spanish — same name
- Carmine in Italian — related form
- Carmelo in Italian — related form
- Karmel in Hebrew — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey.
Carmens among us
people named Carmen are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 16,424 born in 2025 was named Carmen
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 Noble test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Carmen's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Noble climbed just as high around 1901, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Noble's path sketches the road Carmen is walking now.
Carmen is on its second act. Revived names age gently: the generation that wore them first is far enough away that the name feels classic rather than dated.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Carmen is headed
Carmen is on a steep climb — if the curve holds, 2030 could see around 73% more babies given the name than today. Its history is short or jumpy, though, so read this as a sketch rather than a promise.
Low confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Carmen beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Carmen in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The garden meaning is concrete, and Mount Carmel is a documented and significant place.
- It belongs to a coherent family of Marian devotional names.
- Carmine and Carmelo are living masculine cousins in Italian.
- In English the name reads as feminine to nearly everyone.
- The Latin carmen, 'song', is a false friend and not the source.
- It is period-coded to the early twentieth century in American records.
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What they receive
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Carmen
Masculine · #1621 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Carmens are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 7,800 people named Carmen are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Carmen in 2025?
- Carmen ranks #1621 among US boy names in 2025, with 104 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Carmen?
- About 1 in every 16,424 US boys born in 2025 was named Carmen — 104 in all.
- Will my child share the name Carmen with classmates?
- Carmen will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Carmen
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Kendrix#1621 · Teagan#1621 · Ahaan#1621 · Antony#1621 · Obadiah#1621 · Theoden#1621 · Tylen#1621 · Benton#1621
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Carmen? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Carmen and another name?
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Which one would you pick?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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