Humanverse

Cataleya vs Catalina

American parents have registered 33,016 Catalinas since 1880, against 11,955 Cataleyas. Catalina is still ahead, with 2,456 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Cataleya against Catalina, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Cataleya Catalina

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Catalina has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1893 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2012, when Cataleya had 639 and Catalina had 642.

Side by side

  Cataleya Catalina
Total US births 11,95533,016
Most in one year 1,3152,456
Babies in 2025 1,3142,456
Estimated living today 12,00031,000
Median age today 58
Peak year 20242025
Best rank 236th girls111th girls
Rank in 2025 237th111th
First recorded 20111893
Girls / boys 11,955 / 033,009 / 7

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Catalinas alive today are over 8; half the Cataleyas are over 5. That is 3 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Cataleya Catalina
France 4,4551,700
Spain 9251,020
England and Wales 747476
Belgium 566199
Switzerland 401180
Poland 1154
Ireland 5011
Scotland 713

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Cataleya and Catalina.