Entry № 5240 · Danish origin

Karen Karen — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ KAIR-en /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Danish
Meaning
"Pure (peaked #3 in 1965; Karen Blixen, Karen Carpenter)"
Syllables
2
First recorded
Medieval (Danish)

A name that means "pure (peaked #3 in 1965; karen blixen, karen carpenter)".

Karen is the Danish form of Katherine — from the Greek katharos (pure).

Pure (peaked #3 in 1965; Karen Blixen, Karen Carpenter) — a Danish name.

The name in its native script.

Karen
Transliteration
Karen
Pronunciation
/ ˈkær.ən /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Karen stands.

Karen does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.

Karens before her.

Real people
Karen Blixen
Danish author Isak Dinesen.
1885 – 1962
Karen Carpenter
American singer-drummer.
1950 – 1983
Karen Uhlenbeck
American Abel Prize mathematician.
born 1942
In fiction
Karen
Out of Africa.
1937

Names connected to Karen.

The number behind Karen.

4

The Builder

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Karen reduce to 4, The Builder. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.