Charlie

104,901 people in America carry this name — ranked #533 of 923.

Carried mostly by Generation Alpha.

Say it CHAHR lee

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

CH AA1 R L IY0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 104,901 2020 Census
  • Rank #533 Common
  • Per 100,000 34.7 about 1 in 3,160 people
  • As a surname 1,425 ranked #19,072 the other way round

The meaning and origin of Charlie

Teutonic in origin, reading literally as “man”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

How often Charlie has been given

202,665 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 2020, with 4,072 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 00 10s 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 2010s. It has been given more often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

What goes well after Charlie

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Charlie Christopher — same opening
  • Charlie Charles — same opening
  • Charlie Elizabeth — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Never out of use

Charlie has been given in every decade on record — no fashion lifted it and none has dropped it.

Is Charlie used for boys or for girls?

79.5% men
21,545 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Same syllables and stress as Charlie

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

How Charlie is spelled

Charlie is how 7.9% of them spell it — 1,326,912 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Who answers to it now

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 61.2%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 18.0%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 11.3%
  • Two or more races — 3.7%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 4.8%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 1.0%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

The states where Charlie is most common

In Mississippi the name is given 2.2 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Mississippi ×2.2
  • Georgia ×1.9
  • Alaska ×1.8
  • Alabama ×1.8
  • South Carolina ×1.5

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

The same name elsewhere

  • Lola Spanish
  • Line German
  • Lina German
  • Carl German
  • Lotty English
  • Lotta Swedish
  • Lotte German
  • Latte Lett
  • Kasch Dant
  • Karol Pol.|Slov
  • Karls Lett
  • Karlo Russ.|Ill
  • Karla Slov
  • Kalle Swedish

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

Try it Compare Two Names

Put another name beside this one.

One of those is not in the census file.

Open Compare Two Names on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Teutonic origin