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Katelyn vs Katheryn

American parents have registered 134,206 Katelyns since 1880, against 15,220 Katheryns. Katelyn is still ahead, with 225 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Katelyn against Katheryn, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Katelyn Katheryn

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 146 years in which either name was published, Katheryn for 100 years and Katelyn for 46 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Katelyn Katheryn
Total US births 134,20615,220
Most in one year 5,975213
Babies in 2025 22545
Estimated living today 132,00010,000
Median age today 2640
Peak year 19931990
Best rank 54th girls900th girls
Rank in 2025 1,076th3,389th
First recorded 19701880
Girls / boys 134,049 / 15715,220 / 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 Katheryns alive today are over 40; half the Katelyns are over 26. That is 14 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 Katelyn Katheryn
England and Wales 3,22154
Ireland 2,1614

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: Katelyn and Katheryn.