Humanverse

Kateland vs Katherine

American parents have registered 652,750 Katherines since 1880, against 659 Katelands. Katherine is still ahead, with 1,670 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kateland 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 1998, when Kateland had 41 and Katherine had 8,220.

Side by side

  Kateland Katherine
Total US births 659652,750
Most in one year 4511,657
Babies in 2025 under 51,670
Estimated living today 650481,000
Median age today 3039
Peak year 19911990
Best rank 2,660th girls26th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked186th
First recorded 19851880
Girls / boys 659 / 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 Katelands are over 30. That is 9 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 Kateland Katherine
England and Wales 2711,363

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: Kateland and Katherine.