One subject, in depth · bridged to FuelFacts
NameCurve
Boys' name · 34,476 recorded births

Karter

#270 in the US in 2025

Where Karter stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#270boys’ names · US 2025

Karter was the 270th most registered boys' name in the United States in 2025, on 1,265 births.

peak 2019 · 2,425188019532025

Its moment was 2019, when 2,425 babies were given it. In 4 of the years between, the name fell under the 5-birth floor and the registrar published nothing — those years are the marks along the base of the chart, not gaps in the name's use.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#270US rank, 2025 (boys)
1,265US births in 2025
#162its best US rank, in 2020
2019peak year — 2,425 births
29,465US births since 1985
53NZ births since 2017
371E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Karter's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Karter was under the floor in 4 years of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Karter in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.068136
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Karter in the United States, 1880–2025
boysgirls

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been falling — down 34% as a share of boys' births.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Karter in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Karter has been registered 53 times since 2017, peaking in 2020 with 16 births. It did not clear the DIA's 10-birth reporting floor in 2025.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.04692
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Karter in New Zealand, 1900–2025

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Karter in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Karter was registered 371 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2019 with 77 births. It ranked #896 for boys in 2025 on 35 births. Across those years it has been falling.

20200.01325
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Karter in England and Wales, 2019–2025

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1990#5,3829
2000#1,84857
2010#443604
2020#1622,340

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Karter most often since 1985. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
Texas2,721
Georgia1,915
Florida1,512
Ohio1,392
North Carolina1,360
New York1,242
California1,237
Louisiana1,208
Michigan1,102
Illinois1,010

Questions about Karter

How popular is the name Karter?

Karter ranked #270 for boys in the United States in 2025, on 1,265 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Karter most popular?

Karter peaked in 2019, when 2,425 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Karter rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all boys' births, Karter has been falling between 2016 and 2025 (-34%).

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 2019, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

See what every site in this family answers

Published by

Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.