Karla
Feminine · “free man”
Karla is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 91,586 girls against 309 boys since 1880.
Karla is the German and Czech spelling of the feminine Karl — the same name Charlemagne carried in his own language, Karl, before Latin scribes made it Carolus. Two syllables, both landing exactly where the letters say they will, with that hard K opening and the soft -la at the end. It has been on American record for over a century and is heard on both sides of the Atlantic without translation.
How old is the name Karla?
Karla first appears in US birth records in 1915 — 110 years ago. The typical Karla alive today was born around 1981, making them about 44 years old. About 85,000 people named Karla are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Karla most popular?
Karla peaked in 2002, reaching #175 nationally. Today it ranks #799, 624 places below that high. See the whole 2002 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Karl to Karla
The story of Karla
The name begins with Karl, one of the oldest continuously used names in German-speaking Europe, borne by Frankish and later Swedish and Prussian kings; Charlemagne was Karl der Große at home and Carolus Magnus in Latin. From that Latin form Europe drew Carlo, Carlos, Charles and Carl, and from those came the feminine Carla, Carolina and Charlotte. Karla is the northern and central European way of writing the feminine — standard in Germany, Czechia and Scandinavia, where the K spelling never went anywhere. It reached American records with German and Scandinavian families, and later found a second, larger life among Spanish-speaking families in the US, who use Carla and Karla side by side.
Meaning
free man; man
The root is the Germanic word behind Old High German karl, 'man, husband,' commonly given as 'free man' — a free peasant as distinct from a serf. Karla is its feminine form.
How the name formed
- Karl
- Carolus
- Carla
- Karla
Related forms: Carla · Karla · Karla · Carola · Charlotte · Karolina
Pronouncing Karla
KAR-luh
Stress on the first syllable. In German and Czech the final vowel is fuller — KAR-lah — and Spanish speakers say it the same way.
Nicknames for Karla
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
- 1915
- Most girls named
- 19642,060 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #175reached in 2002
- Change vs 2023
- −14.6%340 in 2025, from 398
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.
Karla in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Carla in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese — spelling variant
- Karla in German — same name
- Karla in Czech — same name
- Carola in Dutch — related form
- Charlotte in French — related form
- Karolina in Polish — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida.
Karlas among us
people named Karla are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 4,727 born in 2025 was named Karla
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Karla
- #799
- Karla on the 2025 chart
- #480
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Karla went to 340 girls in 2025, but Carla is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 563, which makes it the 480th most-given girls’ name of the year — 319 places above the chart.
- Karla340
- Carla223
About 1 girl in 2,855 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 4,727 for Karla 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 Aisha test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Karla's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Aisha climbed just as high around 1977, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Aisha's path sketches the road Karla is walking now.
Karla 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 Karla is headed
Karla 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.
Karla beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Karla in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spelled the way it sounds in English, Spanish and German alike, with no silent letters and no ambiguity about stress.
- The K spelling is the standard one in Germany, Czechia and Scandinavia, so it is familiar rather than invented.
- Over a century of unbroken presence in American records, and still given to babies now.
- Belongs to a large, well-known family of names — Carla, Carolina, Charlotte, Carlos — which makes it easy to place at first hearing.
- Short enough to need no nickname, but it has real ones if wanted.
- Carla is the more common spelling in English-speaking countries, so Karla will often be written the other way. It is a one-letter correction, but a lifelong one.
- In the US the name is still strongly represented among adults rather than children, so it may read as a grown woman's name for a while before it reads as a little girl's.
- The meaning traces back to a word for 'man,' which some parents like for its plainness and others would rather not have as the root.
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What they receive
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Karla
Feminine · #799 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Karlas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 85,000 people named Karla are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Karla?
- Karla is the most-used spelling in US records — 340 of the 563 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Carla.
- How popular is the name Karla in 2025?
- Karla ranks #799 among US girl names in 2025, with 340 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Karla?
- About 1 in every 4,727 US girls born in 2025 was named Karla — 340 in all.
- Will my child share the name Karla with classmates?
- Karla will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Karla
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Kaitlyn#799 · Kayleigh#799 · Janelle#799 · Dalia#799 · Aileen#799 · Bellamy#797 · Elowen#797 · Rayna#795
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Karla? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Karla and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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