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Katerina vs Kathleen

American parents have registered 715,336 Kathleens since 1880, against 8,021 Katerinas. Kathleen is still ahead, with 201 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Katerina 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 2020, when Katerina had 191 and Kathleen had 253.

Side by side

  Katerina Kathleen
Total US births 8,021715,336
Most in one year 25926,749
Babies in 2025 151201
Estimated living today 7,900509,000
Median age today 2267
Peak year 19981951
Best rank 822nd girls10th girls
Rank in 2025 1,427th1,150th
First recorded 19541880
Girls / boys 8,021 / 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 Katerinas are over 22. That is 45 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 Katerina Kathleen
Ireland 96,266
France 1655,185
England and Wales 8772,013
Scotland 132,046
Belgium 27290
Switzerland 8577
Poland 375

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: Katerina and Kathleen.