Holiday Calendar

National Carla Day

Next celebratedThursday, November 19, 2026

Carla travels between Spanish, Italian and German without changing a letter. National Carla Day takes in all three, though a Carla with Italian family may already be keeping May 9 instead.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATENovember 19
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

No account of it points to a record.

No founder, organising body or first observance has been located for National Carla Day, and no year can be given for its emergence. What circulates as its origin story traces back to unsourced descriptions of the day rather than to any record.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday
INTRO

Only one name in Spain's top 100 has left America's top 1,000

In 2024 Spanish parents gave 1,413 newborn girls the name Carla. That made it the fourteenth most common name for girls born in Spain. In the United States the same year it ranked 1,009th.

National Carla Day sits on a name that the two countries' birth registries now place a long way apart. Take the 100 names Spanish parents used most often for girls in 2024. Thirty-seven of them have spent time inside America's top 100.

Thirty-six of them were still inside America's top 1,000 in 2024. Carla was the one that was not.

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ORIGINS

Carla Day history

INTRODUCTION

The name is far older than any calendar entry attached to it. Behind the Name files Carla as the feminine form of Carlo, Carlos or Carl, built on the Old Germanic element karlaz and the Old High German and Old Norse word karl, which meant simply "man".

The root is Germanic rather than Latin, and the gloss is "man" rather than "strong". Romance languages borrowed the name; they did not build it.

CHAPTER 01

Five girls in 1890

American record keeping picks the name up in 1890. That year five girls were given it, the first time Carla appears in the Social Security Administration's annual files. It has turned up in 126 of the 146 years the files cover.

CHAPTER 02

A decade that opened and closed

Carla entered America's top 100 girls' names in 1961. It left after 1970. Those ten years are the only ones it has spent there in 146 years of records.

Its best placing came in 1965, at 76th, halfway through the run.

Altogether 150,390 American girls have been given the name since 1880. Between 1970 and 2025 its share of newborn girls fell by 94 percent, to 223 births in the last year on file.

CHAPTER 03

A day with nothing behind it

The observance is a different matter entirely. Searches for a founder, an organising body, a proclamation or a first observance came back empty. A Federal Register search for the exact phrase returns no documents.

The archived record is just as thin. A long-running November 19 listing page has been captured 65 times since 2018, and Carla appears in none of them.

That gap is ordinary for a name day. What the day borrows instead is a name whose own record runs from 1890 to 2025 and is published every year in three countries.

TIMELINE

Timeline

First Carlas in the US record

Five American girls were given the name, its earliest appearance in the Social Security Administration's annual files.

Carla Bley is born

The composer and bandleader was born in Oakland on 11 May and named an NEA Jazz Master in 2015.

Carla enters the US top 100

The name reached 77th among American girls' names, the first of ten straight years inside the top 100.

Last year in the top 100

Carla ranked 94th, then fell out of the American top 100 and has not appeared there since.

Del Ponte takes the UN post

The Security Council appointed Carla Del Ponte prosecutor of the Yugoslavia and Rwanda tribunals on 11 August.

Hayden becomes Librarian of Congress

Carla D. Hayden was sworn in as the 14th Librarian of Congress, the first woman and first African American to lead it.

GOOD TO KNOW

National Carla Day Around the World

Spain

The name is fading in Spain too. Its share of newborn girls fell from 1.579 percent in 2010 to 0.916 percent in 2024, and its rank slipped from sixth to fourteenth.

England and Wales

38 girls were registered with the name in 2025. The Office for National Statistics ranks on the exact spelling written on the birth certificate, so a differently spelled version counts as a different name.

Italy

The Italian saints reference Santi e Beati puts Carla's name day on 9 May, for the venerable Carola Gerhardinger of Regensburg. It keeps Carlo separate, on 4 November, for San Carlo Borromeo.

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Carla Day

The same root gave English a word for a peasant

Old English ceorl, 'peasant, one of the lowest class of freemen, man without rank', comes from Proto-Germanic kerlaz or karlaz and became the modern insult churl. The Online Etymology Dictionary notes that the same word came to mean king in Lithuanian and Polish, by way of Charlemagne.

Carla outran the 1960s wave of a-ending names

Between 1955 and 1965 the share of American girls given any name ending in a rose by a factor of 1.058. Carla's own share rose by 1.727 over the same ten years, so the general fashion explains almost none of its climb.

Carla's two biggest American years are three births apart

1962 produced 5,820 Carlas and 1961 produced 5,817. The margin is too small to name a winner, which is why the decade rather than the year is the honest unit.

The oath was taken on a Bible Lincoln had used

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. swore Carla D. Hayden in on a Bible held by her mother, Colleen Hayden, which had been used by Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama.

Nearly a third of American Carlas share one decade

47,744 girls were named Carla between 1961 and 1970. That is 31.7 percent of every Carla in the American birth record.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Carla Day

COHORT

Mean age 17.5 in Spain, median birth year 1966 in America.

Spain's population census counted 87,268 Carlas on 1 January 2025, at a mean age of 17.5. In the American birth record the median Carla was born in 1966.

EVIDENCE

A name you can check rather than repeat

Spain's statistics office, the US Social Security Administration and the Office for National Statistics each publish name counts every year. Any claim about Carla can be measured against a public file.

SPREAD

One spelling, seven language communities

Behind the Name records Carla in Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, English, German and Dutch use. The same five letters serve all seven.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Carla Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Look up her birth year in the name record

The Social Security Administration's files run back to 1880 and list every name given to at least five babies in a year. Find the number for the year the Carla you know was born.

ASK

Ask a Carla how the name reached her family

Names travel by family route rather than by ranking. Ask where hers came from, and write the answer down.

LISTEN

Listen to a Carla Bley album

Carla Bley was a composer, arranger, bandleader and keyboardist, and she died in 2023. Put one of her records on and let the day have a soundtrack.

EXPLORE

Explore the Library of Congress online

The Library that Carla D. Hayden was sworn in to lead makes its research collections available on site and online. Spend part of the day inside them.

ADD

Add the Italian name day to the calendar

A Carla with Italian family may already keep 9 May rather than November 19. Marking both costs nothing and covers the whole family.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Carla Day?

1 / 9

Where did Carla rank among names given to baby girls in Spain in 2024?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance and a normal working day, and the Federal Register carries no document that names it.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

13sources
9primary records
6independently dated
Primary records
Instituto Nacional de Estadistica2024
Nacimientos segun el nombre del nacido. Ano 2024. Datos definitivos
Spain's official table of the 100 most common first names given to boys and to girls born in 2024, with exact counts and the national birth totals. It is the source of Carla's fourteenth place and its 1,413 births.
View source
Instituto Nacional de Estadistica2010
Nacimientos segun el nombre del nacido. Ano 2010
The same Spanish table for 2010, the earliest year in the published series, showing Carla sixth with 3,723 of 235,848 girls born. It is the start point for the fifteen-year decline.
View source
Instituto Nacional de Estadistica1 January 2025
Frecuencias de nombres femeninos: todos los nombres con frecuencia igual o mayor a 20 personas
Every first name held by 20 or more residents of Spain, with its frequency, its national rank and the mean age of everyone who holds it. It gives Carla 87,268 bearers and a mean age of 17.5.
View source
US Social Security Administrationthrough birth year 2025
National data on the relative frequency of given names in the population of US births (names.zip), Internet Archive capture
Every first name given to five or more American babies of one sex in each year from 1880 to 2025, with exact counts. Every American figure on this page is computed from it, and its vintage was checked by reproducing the agency's own published 1960s decade totals.
View source
Office for National Statistics9 July 2026
Baby names for girls in England and Wales: 2025
The full ranked list of girls' first names registered in England and Wales, where Carla appears with 38 registrations. The workbook also states that rankings use the exact spelling written on the birth certificate.
View source
Library of Congress14 September 2016
Carla D. Hayden Sworn In as 14th Librarian of Congress
The Library's own announcement of the swearing-in on 14 September 2016, naming the Chief Justice who administered the oath and the Lincoln and Obama Bible held by Hayden's mother.
View source
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
Former Prosecutors
The tribunal's own biographies of its prosecutors, recording Carla Del Ponte's birth in Lugano in 1947, her appointment by the Security Council on 11 August 1999 and her tenure to 2007.
View source
National Endowment for the Arts
Carla Bley
The federal arts agency's record of Bley's 2015 NEA Jazz Master award as a composer, arranger, bandleader and keyboardist, with her birth in Oakland on 11 May 1936 and her death on 17 October 2023.
View source
Federal Register
Documents search API
The US government's daily journal, searched for the exact phrase National Carla Day. It returns no documents.
View source
Additional coverage
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Carla
The etymology reference that files Carla as the feminine form of Carlo, Carlos or Carl and lists the languages it is used in, from Italian and Catalan to German and Dutch.
View source
Behind the Name
Name Element KARL
The entry for the root itself, glossing karl as an Old High German and Old Norse word meaning man and tracing it to the Old Germanic element karlaz.
View source
Online Etymology Dictionary
churl
The entry tracing Old English ceorl to Proto-Germanic kerlaz or karlaz, and noting that the same word came to mean king in Lithuanian and Polish by way of Charlemagne.
View source
Santi e Beati
Dizionario dei nomi
The Italian saints reference that assigns Carla's name day to 9 May, for the venerable Carola Gerhardinger of Regensburg, and keeps Carlo on 4 November for San Carlo Borromeo.
View source
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