Humanverse

Catelynn vs Katelyn

American parents have registered 134,206 Katelyns since 1880, against 822 Catelynns. Katelyn is still ahead, with 225 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Catelynn against Katelyn, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Catelynn Katelyn

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

Katelyn has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1970 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2010, when Catelynn had 70 and Katelyn had 2,959.

Side by side

  Catelynn Katelyn
Total US births 822134,206
Most in one year 705,975
Babies in 2025 under 5225
Estimated living today 810132,000
Median age today 1826
Peak year 20101993
Best rank 2,589th girls54th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked1,076th
First recorded 19881970
Girls / boys 822 / 0134,049 / 157

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 Katelyns alive today are over 26; half the Catelynns are over 18. That is 8 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 Catelynn Katelyn
England and Wales 33,221

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: Catelynn and Katelyn.