The Popularity Of The Name 'Karen' Over Time, Visualized

The name "Karen" has become cultural shorthand for a very specific type of woman: usually white, entitled, older and brandishing a "Can I speak to the manager" attitude. But just how common has the name "Karen" actually been over time in the US?

Using data on baby names from the Social Security Administration, Reddit user metallicmural99 charted this graph that shows the rise and fall in popularity of the name "Karen" from 1880 to 2018.

You can see that the proportional usage of "Karen" as a baby name began to rise in the 1950s and stayed high throughout the 1960s. It peaked in 1956, according to online media company BabyCenter, and during that year, there were 19,953 babies named Karen per million newborn babies in the US. After the 50s and 60s, "Karen" began to ebb in popularity, hence its association with older, usually middle-aged women. It's hard to say when "Karen" will again be popular, but we're going to take a wild guess and say it's probably not going to be 2020.

[Via Reddit]