Humanverse

Katherine vs Katrina

American parents have registered 652,750 Katherines since 1880, against 101,731 Katrinas. Katherine is still ahead, with 1,670 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Katherine Katrina

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 1972, when Katherine had 4,526 and Katrina had 2,759.

Side by side

  Katherine Katrina
Total US births 652,750101,731
Most in one year 11,6573,415
Babies in 2025 1,67083
Estimated living today 481,00096,000
Median age today 3942
Peak year 19901980
Best rank 26th girls90th girls
Rank in 2025 186th2,214th
First recorded 18801895
Girls / boys 650,926 / 1,824101,493 / 238

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 Katrinas alive today are over 42; half the Katherines are over 39. That is 3 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 Katrina
England and Wales 11,3632,216
New Zealand 3,9123,184
Scotland 2,7991,904
Ireland 2,593593
France 1,530215
Northern Ireland 37445
Norway 179155
Poland 7639

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 Katrina.