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Catalina vs Catharina

American parents have registered 33,016 Catalinas since 1880, against 332 Catharinas. Catalina is still ahead, with 2,456 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Catalina Catharina

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 1955, when Catalina had 44 and Catharina had 8.

Side by side

  Catalina Catharina
Total US births 33,016332
Most in one year 2,45614
Babies in 2025 2,45611
Estimated living today 31,000320
Median age today 834
Peak year 20251989
Best rank 111th girls5,836th girls
Rank in 2025 111th8,860th
First recorded 18931948
Girls / boys 33,009 / 7332 / 0

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 Catharinas alive today are over 34; half the Catalinas are over 8. That is 26 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

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

Country Catalina Catharina
France 1,700290
England and Wales 4769
Belgium 199137
Ireland 116

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: Catalina and Catharina.