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Carter

216,871 recorded births · active 1881–2025

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Living-age distribution

The median living Carter is 12. If you meet a Carter, there's about a 70% chance they're between 5 and 22 years old.

Popularity arc

Peak Carter: 2015. Down 33% from peak.

Projected: the dashed 10-year forecast (Holt damped-trend exponential smoothing, fit to recent years), with a shaded 95% interval.

Gender balance

95.3% male, 4.7% female.

95.3%male
Male95.3%
Female4.7%

Rarity

Carter ranks #366 out of 105,966 names ever recorded by the SSA.

99.7%more common
Commonness rank#366of 105,966

Name neighbors

People named Carter have popularity-curve siblings named:

AveryBraxtonLillianaBrightonAleena

Geographic fingerprint

Carters are 1.2x more common in the Midwest than the national average.

Under-indexed
Over-indexed
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Predictive modeling

Three statistical models, all fit to Carter's own SSA history plus the historical behavior of every other name in the dataset.

Peak popularity prediction

Carter's modeled peak was #31 in 2016 — its trend isn't projected to beat that.

Top 1000 Reached in 1881
Top 500 Reached in 1996
Top 100 Reached in 2008
Top 50 Reached in 2012
Top 10
0% chance

Projects the trend forward, then converts share into rank using this year's popularity distribution.

This forecasts Carter's share of births by fitting a damped-trend model to its last 144 years of data and projecting 10 years forward with a widening uncertainty band. Each projected share is then translated into a rank by comparing it against 2025's actual name-popularity distribution — so the model implicitly assumes the overall shape of that distribution doesn't shift much over the forecast window. Its trend is projected to stay below its historic best over the next 10 years, so the model treats 2016 as its peak. Milestone probabilities come from how much of each year's uncertainty band clears that milestone's rank, combined across years as if they were independent — which slightly overstates the odds for names sitting right at a threshold, since a good year is usually followed by another good year rather than an independent coin flip.

Name life-cycle stage

A rule-based classifier over recent growth, momentum, and peak proximity.

Declining

Births have shrunk about 4% a year on average over the last 5 years.

10
years since peak
↘ falling
overall trend
~41 years
estimated time left in top 1000

Popularity survival model

Once a name reaches a rank tier, how long does it typically stay there before falling out?

Built from a Kaplan-Meier survival curve: every historical run any name has ever had above this tier, with runs still ongoing today counted as still in progress rather than as an exit.

Carter has been in the Top 100 tier for 18 years running.

Chance Carter is still in Top 100 after:

86%
5 years
74%
10 years
45%
20 years

Median years remaining above Top 100: ~18. Based on 668 historical Top 100 runs across every name in the dataset.