A male name. (Latin Carolus, French Charles, Italian Carlo, Spanish Carlos, German, Scandinavian Karl, Dutch Slavonic Karel); Old German carl (Old English ceorl) ‘a man’. Karl or Carl was latinized as Carolus, whence the French Charles. The great popularity of the name in France and Germany was chiefly due to the renown of the Emperor Charles the Great, or Charlemagne. Charles was introduced to England by the Normans, but did not become common, though it is occasionally found from the 12th C on often in the form Carle, and gave rise to the surnames Charles and Charlet (from a diminutive). Promptorium Parvulorum gives it as Charlys. The use of the name in the House of Stuart did something to increase its popularity amongst Royalists in the 17th C and Jacobites in the 18th C, but it was not until the 19th C that it became really common, often in the pet-form Charlie. It was hardly used in Ireland until the 17th C, when it began to be used to translate various native names such as Cathal and Catheoir.

Karolus Curia Regis Rolls 1205, 1207. Carle Curia Regis Rolls 1205, 1210. Charles Hundred Rolls 1273.

Earliest as Karl, which in Teutonic languages means ‘a man’: cf. the A. -S. ceorl, whence churl. The form Charles seems to have been Fr.—from a blending of Karl (become Carl) and its Latin ‘shape’, Carolus—long before it was adopted in England. As Charlotte Yonge says, our James I, thinking it a lucky—nay, a fortunate—name, and hoping to avert ‘the unhappy doom that had pursued five James Stuarts in succession,... called his sons Henry and Charles’. The fate of ‘the royal martyr’ rendered Charles the most popular of all ‘Christians’ among the loyalists, and later among the Jacobites, both English and Scottish, so that, in late C17-20, Charles is, with John, George, and William, the commonest of English font-names. (For derivative senses, see my Dictionary of Unconventional English, especially under:)

Corrupted from Carolus, from the Old German kerl, strong (Anglo-Saxon carl, a male, whence ecorl, a countryman, churl, husbandman, a man, a husband), whence the name Carlomannus, Carlman, by corruption Charlemagne. Wachter gives several words compounded of kerl, as karlmadr strong, stout, karlman strong man, valiant man, karlmenska manliness, fortitude.

Teutonic (masculine) - Valiant,strong.

A Teutonic name, meaning: Robust: of noble spirit: strong.

A Gaelic name: Tearlach, Middle Irish Toirrdhealbhach (Maclean Genealogy), Englished as Tirlagh and Turlough, Early Irish Toirdelbach, Latinised and explained as Turri-formis, “Tower-shaped,” but the toir in Gaelic took the phonetics of the prefix tair, super, and hence the modern Gaelic form. Hence M'Kerlie.