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Kathleen vs Katia

American parents have registered 715,336 Kathleens since 1880, against 6,339 Katias. Kathleen is still ahead, with 201 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kathleen Katia

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 2023, when Kathleen had 248 and Katia had 123.

Side by side

  Kathleen Katia
Total US births 715,3366,339
Most in one year 26,749272
Babies in 2025 20193
Estimated living today 509,0006,200
Median age today 6723
Peak year 19511996
Best rank 10th girls772nd girls
Rank in 2025 1,150th2,036th
First recorded 18801960
Girls / boys 713,645 / 1,6916,339 / 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 Kathleens alive today are over 67; half the Katias are over 23. That is 44 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 Kathleen Katia
France 5,18531,145
England and Wales 2,013224
Belgium 290162
Poland 5184

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: Kathleen and Katia.