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Kathrine vs Kathryn

American parents have registered 456,515 Kathryns since 1880, against 15,775 Kathrines. Kathryn is still ahead, with 381 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kathrine against Kathryn, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kathrine Kathryn

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

Kathryn 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 1882, when Kathrine had 29 and Kathryn had 272.

Side by side

  Kathrine Kathryn
Total US births 15,775456,515
Most in one year 2758,517
Babies in 2025 15381
Estimated living today 11,000315,000
Median age today 4748
Peak year 19561952
Best rank 567th girls48th girls
Rank in 2025 7,133rd729th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 15,775 / 0455,423 / 1,092

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.

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 Kathrine Kathryn
England and Wales 1034,791
Scotland 292,620
Ireland 101,250
France 5115

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: Kathrine and Kathryn.