Carmin
Feminine · “of Mount Carmel”
Carmin is given to both — 864 girls and 129 boys since 1880. See other names given to both
Three different words crowd into this spelling and only one of them is the name. Carmen is Spanish and comes from a mountain in Israel. Carmen is also the Latin for a song or a poem. And carmine is a deep red pigment whose name traveled from Arabic through Latin, made from an insect. The name is the first of those; the other two arrive uninvited every time it is heard.
How old is the name Carmin?
Carmin first appears in US birth records in 1940 — 85 years ago. The typical Carmin alive today was born around 1988, making them about 37 years old. About 800 people named Carmin are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Carmin most popular?
Carmin peaked in 1986, reaching #2682 nationally. Today it ranks #13208, 10,526 places below that high. See the whole 1986 chart.
Where it comes from
From Karmel to Carmin
The story of Carmin
The Carmelite order took its name from Mount Carmel, where hermits had settled by the twelfth century, and Marian devotion to Our Lady of Carmel spread across the Spanish-speaking world. Carmen became one of the standard Spanish women's names on that basis and remains so. Its literary fame in English comes from a French novella and the opera made from it, which put a Spanish woman named Carmen in front of every audience in Europe and permanently colored how the name is heard. Carmin, without the e, is an American spelling that quietly avoids all of that while keeping the sound.
Meaning
of Mount Carmel
The Spanish Carmen is a Marian title — Nuestra Señora del Carmen, Our Lady of Mount Carmel — and Carmel is a range in northern Israel whose Hebrew name means something like garden or orchard. The Latin carmen, meaning a song or a charm, is a completely different word that looks identical, and it has attached itself to the name in popular accounts for centuries without ever being its source.
How the name formed
- Karmel
- Carmen
- Carmin
Related forms: Carmen · Carmine · Carmo · Karmel
Pronouncing Carmin
KAR-min
Two syllables, stress on the first, the second reduced. In Italian, Carmine is a man's name with three syllables, said kar-MEE-neh, which is a genuinely different name that this spelling resembles closely.
Nicknames for Carmin
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
- 1940
- Most girls named
- 198636 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2682reached in 1986
- Change vs 2024
- −25.0%6 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.
Carmin in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Carmen in Spanish — same name
- Carmine in Italian — related form
- Carmo in Portuguese — related form
- Karmel in Hebrew — related form
Carmins among us
people named Carmin are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 267,878 born in 2025 was named Carmin
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Carmin
- #13208
- Carmin on the 2025 chart
- #852
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Carmin went to 6 girls in 2025, but Karmyn, Carmyn and Karmin are the same name said out loud. Together the 4 spellings went to 108, which makes it the 852nd most-given girls’ name of the year — 12,356 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 14,882 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 267,878 for Carmin itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Johnita test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Carmin's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Johnita climbed just as high around 1965, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Johnita's path sketches the road Carmin is walking now.
Carmin 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
Carmin beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Carmin in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It is short, readable and impossible to mispronounce in English.
- The Marian history behind it is documented and specific to a real mountain.
- It works for a child of either sex in the record, though nearly all are girls.
- The color association, while not the origin, is a striking one to carry.
- Carmen is the standard spelling and will be written on nearly everything.
- In Italian the near-identical Carmine is a man's name, which causes confusion abroad.
- The opera is the first association for a great many adults, and it is not an easy story.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
Someone added a name to your list
Carmin
Feminine · #13208 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Carmins are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 800 people named Carmin are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Carmin?
- Carmin is one of 4 recorded spellings. Karmyn is the more common one — 51 births in 2025 against 6 for Carmin.
- How popular is the name Carmin in 2025?
- Carmin ranks #13208 among US girl names in 2025, with 6 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Carmin?
- About 1 in every 267,878 US girls born in 2025 was named Carmin — 6 in all.
- Will my child share the name Carmin with classmates?
- Carmin will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Carmin
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
John#13208 · Vinnie#13208 · Margery#13208 · Jossie#13208 · Tressa#13208 · Erie#13208 · Bernadine#13208 · Euna#13208
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Carmin? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Carmin and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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