Karl

Where Karl comes from

From German and North Germanic (Scandinavian) Karl, from Germanic. Doublet of Charles.
— Wiktionary's entry for Karl
  • Germanic
Along the way
  1. 1880
    First SSA year
    Already #373 among boys — 21 babies in the first year on record.
  2. 1883
    Karl Jaspers born
    German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher
  3. 1902
    Karl Popper born
    Austrian-British philosopher of science and social and política e falsificationism and for criticism of Plato, Hegel and Marx as totalitarian opponents of open society
  4. 1960
    Peak, #135
    2,594 babies named Karl — more than any year before or since.
  5. 1972
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #199.
In the dictionary
  • A male given name from the Germanic languages, equivalent to English Charles.
Namesakes
  • Karl Popper · Austrian-British philosopher of science and social and política e falsificationism and for criticism of Plato, Hegel and Marx as totalitarian opponents of open society, 1902–1994
  • Karl Jaspers · German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher, 1883–1969
  • Karl Ferdinand Braun · German physicist, 1850–1918
  • Karl Adolph Gjellerup · Danish writer, 1857–1919
  • Karl Dönitz · German admiral and former president of Nazi Germany in 1945, 1891–1980

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.