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Katarina vs Katherine

American parents have registered 652,750 Katherines since 1880, against 9,357 Katarinas. Katherine is still ahead, with 1,670 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Katarina Katherine

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

Katherine 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 2021, when Katarina had 150 and Katherine had 1,821.

Side by side

  Katarina Katherine
Total US births 9,357652,750
Most in one year 52311,657
Babies in 2025 1131,670
Estimated living today 9,200481,000
Median age today 2439
Peak year 19941990
Best rank 476th girls26th girls
Rank in 2025 1,777th186th
First recorded 19581880
Girls / boys 9,357 / 0650,926 / 1,824

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 Katherines alive today are over 39; half the Katarinas are over 24. That is 15 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 Katarina Katherine
England and Wales 47311,363
France 1,3651,530
Scotland 32,799
Ireland 62,593
Norway 1,088179
Belgium 12533
Poland 2076

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: Katarina and Katherine.