Holiday Calendar

National Charlotte Day

Next celebratedSunday, January 17, 2027

The name Charlotte has belonged to a queen, a Bronte, and the spider in Charlotte's Web, and its day arrives with the name at its all-time American best.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEJanuary 17
OBSERVED INUnited States
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

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

The Federal Register does not name the observance.

No founder, organization or establishing document for National Charlotte Day has been located, and a full-text search of the Federal Register returns no document under the name. The observance appears only in holiday-listing calendars, and no source records why it falls on January 17.

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

Beating the princess to the top ten by a year

National Charlotte Day lands on a name America had already picked. Charlotte was the tenth most popular name given to American girls in 2014, according to the Social Security Administration's national birth records.

A widely repeated story credits Princess Charlotte of Cambridge for pushing the name up the American charts. She was born on 2 May 2015. The registry had already put Charlotte in the top ten the year before.

The climb it did make was long and slow. In 2000 that same registry had Charlotte far down the list. It sat at 289th, a full fourteen years from the top ten.

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ORIGINS

Charlotte Day history

INTRODUCTION

The name on this square of the calendar has a paper trail running back centuries. The observance built on it has almost none. That gap is the story.

CHAPTER 01

The queen who put the name on a map

Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz married George III in 1761 and became queen consort of Great Britain. He bought her the Queen's House in London, the building later enlarged into Buckingham Palace. The couple had 15 children.

In 1768 a settlement in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, was established and named for her. Britannica records that it has been called the Queen City ever since. The city government still describes Charlotte and its county as named for the German princess who married the king.

CHAPTER 02

Currer Bell, and the initials that gave it away

The most famous literary Charlotte published under a man's name. Charlotte Bronte and her sisters paid Aylott & Jones to print a book of poems in 1846. Only two copies were bought.

Jane Eyre followed in October 1847, credited to an editor called Currer Bell. The disguise had a rule: each sister kept her own initial, so Charlotte became Currer and Emily became Ellis. Bronte explained it herself, writing of 'a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women'.

CHAPTER 03

A long American record, and no day inside it

The American paper trail starts in 1880, the first year of the federal birth registry. Charlotte is in that opening file, given to 237 girls.

The registry is a plain count of the exact spelling, so Charlotta and Carlotta are filed apart from it. Ranks are positions in a list sorted by that count, with ties broken alphabetically, exactly the way the agency numbers its own published tables.

A full-text search of the Federal Register turns up nothing under National Charlotte Day, against a search that returns more than a thousand documents for Charlotte, North Carolina. The closest the federal record comes is Proclamation 3849, signed by Lyndon B. Johnson and released at Austin, Texas. It set aside 20 May 1968 for the city's bicentennial, and no record explains how the given name later acquired a January date.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Charlotte Day

EVIDENCE

Hazel rose faster than Charlotte, with no royal baby involved.

Charlotte's births rose after the royal birth, but so did a whole cohort of revived vintage names in the same national files. Hazel and Eleanor both rose faster than Charlotte across 2015 and 2016, and neither had a royal event of any kind.

LANGUAGE

One Germanic root, rebuilt twice in French

Charlotte is the French feminine diminutive of Charles, introduced to Britain in the 17th century and traced back to the Latin Carolus and the Germanic Karl, from a word meaning man. Caroline is a second French build on that same root, and Carol is listed as an English diminutive of Caroline.

ENDURANCE

A name the registry has never lost

Charlotte has appeared among the top 1,000 names given to American girls in every year of the federal registry, from 1880 through 2025. The name has never gone out of use in the United States, only in and out of fashion.

MYTH VS FACT

Common Misconceptions

The myth

Princess Charlotte's birth in 2015 pushed the name into the American top ten.

The truth

TODAY reported at the end of 2015 that Charlotte 'also entered the U.S. Top 10 this year'. The Social Security Administration's registry puts that entry in 2014, and Behind the Name dates it to 2014 as well.

The myth

The royal birth made Charlotte the number one girls' name.

The truth

That ranking came from a naming website's page views rather than from birth records. The same TODAY article says the list measures the relative interest of the 45 million unique visitors to that site over the year.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Charlotte Day by the Numbers

13,400
US girls named Charlotte, 2025
No. 2
Charlotte's best US rank, set in 2025
794
Charlotte's 1982 low, US girls
453,433
US Charlottes recorded, 1880-2025

TIMELINE

Timeline

A German princess becomes queen

Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz married George III and became queen consort of Great Britain.

North Carolina city takes her name

Charlotte was established in Mecklenburg County and named for the queen, becoming the Queen City.

Jane Eyre appears under a pseudonym

Charlotte Bronte published the novel in October as a book edited by Currer Bell.

Federal birth registry opens

Charlotte appears in the first year of the national file, given to 237 girls.

A spider gets the name

E. B. White published Charlotte's Web, giving the name one of its best-known fictional bearers.

Johnson proclaims a city bicentennial

Proclamation 3849 set aside 20 May for the bicentennial of Charlotte, North Carolina.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Charlotte Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Look up the name in the federal data

The Social Security Administration publishes a national file for every birth year since 1880. Download one and you can see exactly how many girls were given each recorded spelling, in any year you like.

READ

Read Jane Eyre and check the title page

The first edition went out under the name Currer Bell, not Charlotte Bronte. The National Library of Scotland tells the story of how the three sisters picked their initials.

TAKE

Take a detour through the Queen City

Charlotte, North Carolina carries the name for the same reason a person might, having been named for a German-born queen consort. The city's own government page explains the connection in a paragraph.

READ

Read Charlotte's Web out loud to someone

E. B. White published the novel in 1952 and gave its title character the name. Reading a chapter aloud puts the day in front of a child who will never care about birth registries.

ASK

Ask a Charlotte where her name came from

A queen consort, a novelist and a spider in a children's novel have all carried it. Asking which one a family had in mind makes a better greeting than a card.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Charlotte Day?

1 / 8

In which year did Charlotte first appear in the top ten names given to American girls?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal standing anywhere on record, so it is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

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

14sources
6primary records
4independently dated
Primary records
The American Presidency Project1968
Proclamation 3849 - Charlotte, North Carolina, Day
Lyndon Johnson's proclamation setting aside one day for the city's bicentennial.
View source
Social Security Administration2025
Popular Baby Names: national data
Every name given to five or more US babies of a sex each year since 1880.
View source
Office of the Federal Register
Federal Register documents search API
Full-text search across US federal documents, rules and presidential proclamations.
View source
The Royal Family
Princess Charlotte
The monarchy's own record of the birth on 2 May 2015 and the naming.
View source
The Royal Family
George III
Royal biography covering the house he bought for his wife, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
View source
City of Charlotte
About Charlotte
The city government on its founding, its county and the Queen City nickname.
View source
Additional coverage
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Why Is Charlotte, North Carolina, Called the Queen City?
How an incorporation in 1768 tied the city to a British queen consort.
View source
NCpedia, State Library of North Carolina
Charlotte
State library entry on Charlotte's settlement, its 1768 founding and its royal namesake.
View source
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Charlotte
Origin, popularity history and notable bearers of the name Charlotte.
View source
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Charles
Charles from the Latin Carolus and a Germanic word meaning man.
View source
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Caroline
Caroline as a French feminine form built directly on the same Germanic root.
View source
Behind the Name
Name Days for the name Charlotte
The traditional name days for Charlotte in Austria, France and Norway.
View source
National Library of Scotland2022
Charlotte Bronte, Currer Bell and Jane Eyre
How the Bronte sisters chose the Bell pseudonyms, in Charlotte's own words.
View source
TODAY2015
Most popular baby names of 2015
An end-of-year baby-name roundup crediting the royal birth for Charlotte's rise.
View source
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