Charles
From a Germanic root meaning "free man", it's the English and French counterpart to Karol. In Poland it stays rare: most people here have never met a Charles, and it goes only to boys.
Charles Pronunciation
Charles is pronounced KHAHR-les (/ˈxarlɛs/).
What Charles means
Where Charles comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Charles grew from a Germanic word, karl, which named a free man, or simply a man. That sense has barely moved. Write wolny człowiek beside it on a birth record and you land near what the earliest speakers meant.
French and English speakers took the name up and kept it. The Frankish ruler Karl, crowned emperor in 800, reaches us as Charlemagne, from the Latin Carolus Magnus, Charles the Great. French smoothed Karl into Charles, and English borrowed that spelling, which is why the letters look French while the word underneath is Germanic.
England later gave the name to kings and to Darwin. In a Polish class register, Charles now sits a few lines from Karol, the home-grown form of the same root. Both still mean a free man.
How many people are named Charles
1 in 33563 men in Poland is named Charles. 636 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #1182 among male names.
Charles's popularity over time
4 boys were given the name in 2025, ranking #1022 among newborns. It has been climbing since 2010.
Where Charles is most popular
Charles is most popular in Subcarpathian, 617% above the national average (4 boys born 2019–2025), followed by Warmian-Masurian (+502%) and West Pomeranian (+412%).
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Subcarpathian4 boys born+617%
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Warmian-Masurian2 boys born+502%
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West Pomeranian2 boys born+412%
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Pomeranian2 boys born+193%
Charles as a middle name
Charles is a first name for 636 men in Poland and a middle name for another 709, a 47/53 split, almost evenly. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 269th, between Helmut (727) and Brajan (703).
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#267 Enrique735
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#268 Helmut727
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#269 Charles709
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#270 Brajan703
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#271 Jonasz698