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Cathryn vs Catriona

American parents have registered 16,332 Cathryns since 1880, against 683 Catrionas. Cathryn is still ahead, with 8 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Cathryn Catriona

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 2020, when Cathryn had 20 and Catriona had 15.

Side by side

  Cathryn Catriona
Total US births 16,332683
Most in one year 36832
Babies in 2025 8under 5
Estimated living today 11,000670
Median age today 5523
Peak year 19561998
Best rank 485th girls3,648th girls
Rank in 2025 10,917thunranked
First recorded 18821965
Girls / boys 16,332 / 0683 / 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 Cathryns alive today are over 55; half the Catrionas are over 23. That is 32 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 Cathryn Catriona
Scotland 273,136
Ireland 212,589
England and Wales 167712
Northern Ireland 671

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 Catriona.