Common: hat; control; uparrow; caret; official name: circumflex. Rare: xor sign, chevron; to the (‘to the power of’); fang; pointer (in Pascal).

(http://catb.org/jargon/html/A/ASCII.html)

As someone who is used to the French pronunciation of “caret”, “carrot” is hilarious.

Also, in INTERCAL the character is called “shark” or “sharkfin”.

Exactly! Hence the guesses: is it autocorrect or that the article author has heard the word but never seen it written that made them write it as “carrot”?