Humanverse

Katalia vs Kathleen

American parents have registered 715,336 Kathleens since 1880, against 317 Katalias. Kathleen is still ahead, with 201 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Katalia against Kathleen, 1880 to 2025 0 8k 16k 24k 32k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Katalia Kathleen

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

Kathleen has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2022, when Katalia had 34 and Kathleen had 228.

Side by side

  Katalia Kathleen
Total US births 317715,336
Most in one year 3526,749
Babies in 2025 27201
Estimated living today 320509,000
Median age today 667
Peak year 20141951
Best rank 4,178th girls10th girls
Rank in 2025 4,878th1,150th
First recorded 20121880
Girls / boys 317 / 0713,645 / 1,691

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 Kathleens alive today are over 67; half the Katalias are over 6. That is 61 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 Katalia Kathleen
France 805,185
England and Wales 32,013

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: Katalia and Kathleen.