Carrie is a short form of Caroline or Carol, feminine forms of Charles, so it means "free woman" or "free man", from the Germanic karl. Carrie Fisher, Carrie Underwood and Stephen King's first novel Carrie (1974) all kept it in the public eye. The name was a top 50 choice in the 1970s and early 1980s; it still stood at number 503 in 2000, has since left the top 1,000 and ranks number 2,726 in 2025, with 63 births.