Humanverse

Cathy vs Catrina

American parents have registered 170,646 Cathys since 1880, against 10,150 Catrinas. Cathy is still ahead, with 12 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Cathy against Catrina, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Cathy Catrina

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

Of the 108 years in which either name was published, Cathy for 98 years and Catrina for 10 years. The lead changed hands 12 times.

9 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Cathy Catrina
Total US births 170,64610,150
Most in one year 10,961454
Babies in 2025 1212
Estimated living today 141,0009,700
Median age today 6644
Peak year 19581980
Best rank 34th girls468th girls
Rank in 2025 8,362nd8,362nd
First recorded 19181950
Girls / boys 170,303 / 34310,150 / 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 Cathys alive today are over 66; half the Catrinas are over 44. That is 22 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 Cathy Catrina
France 27,42525
Ireland 66745
England and Wales 58190
Scotland 3189
Northern Ireland 153

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: Cathy and Catrina.