Karina
Feminine
Karina is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 61,464 girls against 253 boys since 1880.
Karina arrives in English by two roads that met at one spelling: the Scandinavian Karin, worn down over centuries from Katarina, and the Latin-rooted Carina, spelled with a K in Slavic and Spanish-speaking countries. It has been at home in Sweden, Russia, Poland, Mexico and the United States without changing a single letter — three even syllables with the stress in the middle, easy to say in most languages a family is likely to speak.
How old is the name Karina?
Karina first appears in US birth records in 1956 — 69 years ago. The typical Karina alive today was born around 1998, making them about 27 years old. About 60,500 people named Karina are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Karina most popular?
Karina peaked in 1996, reaching #108 nationally. Today it ranks #749, 641 places below that high. See the whole 1996 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Aikaterine to Karina
The story of Karina
The Katherine road is the older and better traced: Greek Aikaterine passed into Latin as Katharina, into Scandinavian as Katarina, and there ordinary speech clipped it to Karin — after which Karina appears as the fuller, Latin-flavored version. Alongside it, Carina existed independently in Italian and Spanish from the adjective cara, "dear", and in the Latin of astronomers as the keel of the ship Argo. Slavic languages, which favor K over C, made Karina the standard spelling, and Spanish-speaking families did the same. The name reached the United States through several of these channels at once, which is why it looks equally natural on a Polish, Mexican or Swedish family tree.
Meaningscholars disagree
Either "dear little one" (Latin) or a Scandinavian form of Katherine
Two genuine lines feed this name. One runs from Latin cara, "dear", through Carina — the same word also means "keel of a ship" and names a southern constellation. The other runs through Swedish and Norwegian Karin, a shortening of Katarina, with Karina as its elaborated form; Katherine's own meaning was never settled, though Greek speakers long linked it to katharos, "pure". Both readings are respectable, and most families carrying the name today sit on one road or the other depending on where their branch of it came from.
How the name formed
- Aikaterine
- Katharina
- Katarina
- Karin
- Karina
Related forms: Carina · Karin · Karine · Karyna · Kareena · Katarina
Pronouncing Karina
kuh-REE-nuh
Spanish and Russian speakers say kah-REE-nah, with a fuller first vowel; the stress falls on the middle syllable in every language that uses the name. A minority of English speakers reach for kuh-RYE-nuh on first sight, so expect to correct that occasionally.
Nicknames for Karina
High
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
- 1956
- Most girls named
- 19952,985 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #108reached in 1996
- Change vs 2024
- −0.5%363 in 2025, from 365
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.
Karina in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Carina in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese — spelling variant
- Karin in Swedish, Norwegian — related form
- Karine in French, Armenian — related form
- Karyna in Ukrainian — transliteration
- Kareena in Hindi — spelling variant
- Katarina in Croatian, Slovene — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida.
Karinas among us
people named Karina are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 4,428 born in 2025 was named Karina
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Karina
- #749
- Karina on the 2025 chart
- #516
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Karina went to 363 girls in 2025, but Carina and Karyna are the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 503, which makes it the 516th most-given girls’ name of the year — 233 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 3,195 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 4,428 for Karina 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 Jenny test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Karina's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Jenny climbed just as high around 1977, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Jenny's path sketches the road Karina is walking now.
Karina 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
Where Karina is headed
Karina should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High 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.
Karina beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Karina in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spelled identically in English, Spanish, Polish, Russian and Scandinavian usage, so it crosses borders and families without adjustment.
- Reads exactly as it is written for most English speakers, and has short forms already in real use: Kari, Rina.
- Familiar to nearly everyone through adult bearers, while a child carrying it is unlikely to share it in a classroom.
- Strongly established in California, Texas and Florida, where the Spanish pronunciation and the English one sit side by side comfortably.
- The K is not the only option people expect. Carina, Karyna, Karena and Kareena are all in circulation, so the spelling will need saying aloud on forms and reservations for life.
- Pronunciation splits by language rather than by error: kuh-REE-nuh in English, kah-REE-nah in Spanish and Russian. Worth deciding early which one you will use at home, and being relaxed about hearing the other.
- The meaning depends on which ancestry you claim — "dear" from the Latin side, or the Katherine line through Karin. If a settled, single answer matters to you, this name will not give one.
- Its strongest generation is now made up of adults in their twenties and thirties, so a child named Karina may meet grown women with the name more often than peers — which tends to read as familiar rather than dated.
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What they receive
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Karina
Feminine · #749 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Karinas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 60,500 people named Karina are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Karina?
- Karina is the most-used spelling in US records — 363 of the 503 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Carina and Karyna.
- How popular is the name Karina in 2025?
- Karina ranks #749 among US girl names in 2025, with 363 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Karina?
- About 1 in every 4,428 US girls born in 2025 was named Karina — 363 in all.
- Will my child share the name Karina with classmates?
- Karina will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Karina
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Davina#749 · Adele#751 · Milan#751 · Bethany#751 · Mikayla#746 · Dani#746 · Araceli#746 · Maisy#745
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Karina? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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