Name Awesome

Carolee

Girls' name

Meaning and linguistic origin unconfirmed

Carolee has been given to 4,458 babies in the U.S. since 1917. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1943, with 266 recorded.

Babies named Carolee, 2021

1 in 678,000

Carolee over time, 1880–2025

Girls
010020030018801900192019401960198020002020

Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Carolee: meaning, origin, and history

Meaning and linguistic origin unconfirmed

Deeper origin not confirmed in the cited records

What Carolee means

Carolee is a given name.

The naming story behind Carolee

Wikidata records Carolee as a female given name. The entity identifier is Q26252316, and the classification was checked on 2026-10-20. The spelling matches a source label or alias exactly, without removing accents or linking it to a name merely because the letters look similar.

A database classification is different from an etymological explanation, so those questions remain open in the short meaning.

A modern root explanation needs an additional naming or linguistic reference.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 4,458 girls were recorded with the name Carolee between 1917 and 2021. Its highest annual count was 266 in 1943; its best national rank was #454 in 1943.

Sources & methodologyReferences, data & attribution

Meaning, origin, and language notes draw on the references below.

American popularity figures use published Social Security Administration records for this exact spelling. Counts below five for a name, sex, and year are omitted.

How common is Carolee?

Carolee had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2021, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 2021
1 in 678,000
5 of 3,389,958 births
Among girls only
1 in 328,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 2021
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
469,949 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Carolee sits on the popularity scale

Rarest published (5 a year)#1 — Olivia (13,544)

Chance at least one other child shares the name

If the other children were drawn at random from the 2021 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.

Class of 20Under 1%
Class of 30Under 1%
Grade of 100Under 1%
School of 500Under 1%

Put another way: gather 469,949 children born in 2021 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Carolee. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Carolees were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Carolee was born before 1947 — so the typical Carolee is around 78 today.

Median birth year
1947
About 78 years old
Biggest decade
1940s
30.0% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
1.0%
Mostly a past generation
Recorded since 1950
1,993
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1940s — 30.0% of all recorded uses (1,338).

Is Carolee rising or falling?

Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.

Rank vs 1 year ago
—
Not ranked then
Rank vs 5 years ago
New entry
Not ranked then
Rank vs 10 years ago
—
Not ranked then
Births vs 10 years ago
—
Not published both years
Share of its own peak
0%
Peak was 1943 (266)
Years since peak
82
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Volatile
40.5% average annual change
Best rank ever
#454
1943

Spellings of Carolee

Carolee is not the most common spelling — Carol is, with 42.8% against Carolee's 0.23%.

Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.

Where Carolee is used

Across 1910–2025, Carolee was most concentrated in Utah — about 1 in 11,111 girls, against 1 in 60,540 across all states with data. It was least common in Wisconsin (1 in —).

09 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1Utah1 in 11,111
  2. 2Kansas1 in 20,000
  3. 3Iowa1 in 33,333
  4. 4New Jersey1 in 33,333
  5. 5New York1 in 33,333
  6. 6Washington1 in 33,333
  7. 7California1 in 50,000
  8. 8Pennsylvania1 in 50,000

Shading is the share of that state's recorded girls given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Carolee has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Carolee around the world

Where Carolee ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.

  • South Australia
    1951–1956
    #372
    in 1956

Popularity data from Consumer and Business Services (South Australia). CBS SA data under CC BY 4.0.

Notable people named Carolee

People whose public names include Carolee, backed by Wikidata given-name records and ordered by linked Wikimedia pages. The name may be a middle name.

People data from Wikidata (CC0). Fame is measured, not judged — the order reflects how widely each person is documented, not the U.S. birth records popularity this page is otherwise about.

Carolee by the numbers

The raw record for each sex the name is used for.

As a girl's name

Rank in 2025
Unranked
Trend vs 5 yrs ago
—
Best rank ever
#454
1943
Peak year
1943
266 that year
First recorded
1917
Last recorded
2021
All-time count
4,458
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Carolee

Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.

CaraleeCarleeCarlotaCarsynCarlynCaridadCarolyneCarolannCarleighCarolleeCarolynnCarlottaCarlenaCarlitaCarminaCarleneCarmelNovaleeCarlinaCarsonCaralynJubileeKinsleePreslee

Names with a curve like Carolee

Not spelling — timing. These names rose, peaked and faded in the same years as Carolee, so they read as being from the same moment even when they look nothing alike.

CarrolCarrollMarylinJerrieRuthannGerryCharleenMarvaOraliaBetseyMarilouErlinda

Sibling names for Carolee

Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.

Explore around Carolee

Top names of 1943, Carolee's peak yearThe 1940s in fullOther names that peaked in 1943Girls' names starting with C