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Katherine vs Kathrin

American parents have registered 652,750 Katherines since 1880, against 1,214 Kathrins. Katherine is still ahead, with 1,670 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Katherine Kathrin

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 1965, when Katherine had 4,716 and Kathrin had 20.

Side by side

  Katherine Kathrin
Total US births 652,7501,214
Most in one year 11,65736
Babies in 2025 1,670under 5
Estimated living today 481,0001,000
Median age today 3945
Peak year 19901990
Best rank 26th girls3,078th girls
Rank in 2025 186thunranked
First recorded 18801914
Girls / boys 650,926 / 1,8241,214 / 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 Kathrins alive today are over 45; half the Katherines are over 39. That is 6 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 Katherine Kathrin
England and Wales 11,3633
Norway 179213
Poland 764

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: Katherine and Kathrin.