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Cathryn vs Catlin

American parents have registered 16,332 Cathryns since 1880, against 1,501 Catlins. Cathryn is still ahead, with 8 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Cathryn against Catlin, 1880 to 2025 0 100 200 300 400 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Cathryn Catlin

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

Cathryn has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1882 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1987, when Cathryn had 146 and Catlin had 103.

Side by side

  Cathryn Catlin
Total US births 16,3321,501
Most in one year 368119
Babies in 2025 8under 5
Estimated living today 11,0001,500
Median age today 5534
Peak year 19561991
Best rank 485th girls1,996th girls
Rank in 2025 10,917thunranked
First recorded 18821970
Girls / boys 16,332 / 01,055 / 446

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 Cathryns alive today are over 55; half the Catlins are over 34. That is 21 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 Cathryn Catlin
England and Wales 16718

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: Cathryn and Catlin.