Catherine
The girl's name Catherine has been in the national records since 1880, with 669,611 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 313th. About 381,000 Catherines are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 58.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Catherine boys named Catherine
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 669,611
- Estimated living today
- 381,000
- Median age today
- 58
- Peak year
- 1956
- Best rank
- 28th
- Rank in 2025
- 313th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 667,789 / 1,822
How old the living Catherines are
born that year still alive today
Of the 669,611 babies given the name since 1880, about 381,000 are alive — 57 in every hundred. Roughly 27,000 of them are children and 146,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1967 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Ancient Greek
from Ancient Greek Αἰκατερίνη, *Ἑκατερίνη, of debated meaning, possibly from ἑκάτερος (“each of the two”), or from the name of the goddess Hecate. The of the first syllable as well as the spelling with ⟨th⟩ in Latin languages, German and English, is due to a folk etymology, dating from Roman times, which associated the name with the Ancient Greek καθαρός (“pure”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Catherines
- Catherine II of Russia (1729–1796)eighth Emperor of Russia, called the Great, r. 1762–1796 (lived 1729-1796)
- Catherine, Princess of Wales (born 1982)member of the British Royal Family and princess of Wales since 2022
- Catherine Zeta-Jones (born 1969)British actress
- Catherine Deneuve (born 1943)French actress
- Catherine de' Medici (1519–1589)queen-consort and regent of France
- Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536)first wife of Henry VIII of England
- Catherine of Siena (1347–1380)Italian Dominican saint
- Catherine I of Russia (1684–1727)The first Empress of Russia from 1725 to 1727
People named Catherine with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Catherine is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Catherine is most concentrated in the District of Columbia (2.0×), Massachusetts (1.8×), Pennsylvania (1.7×), Delaware (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1956
The most popular girls’ names the year Catherine peaked:
Catherine elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Catherine +1 spelling | 394,685 | 2nd |
| Ireland girls | Catherine | 22,641 | 2nd |
| England and Wales girls | Catherine | 8,442 | 68th |
| New Zealand girls | Catherine | 7,765 | 19th |
| Scotland girls | Catherine | 5,506 | 34th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Catherine | 997 | 22nd |
| Belgium girls | Catherine | 547 | 183rd |
| Norway girls | Catherine | 508 | 196th |
| France boys | Catherine | 200 | 453rd |
| Switzerland girls | Catherine | 171 | 355th |
| Poland girls | Catherine | 43 birth registrations | 289th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Catherine: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Catherine | 85 | 0.007% | 364th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Catherine | 78 | 0.018% | 178th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Catherine | 8 | 0.012% | 104th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Catherine is most concentrated in Geneva, where 0.03% of children were given it – 32 of them.
Catherine: rank by region
In 2025, Catherine was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Catherine | 753 | 6 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Catherine among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Catherine | 645 | 2,484 |
| Finland girls | Catherine +1 spelling | 161 | 454 |
| the Netherlands boys | Catherine | — | 43 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Catherine lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 1,810 women called Catherine were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Catherine | 161 | 0.157 | 565 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Catherine | 76 | 0.137 | 723 |
| Málaga | Catherine | 117 | 0.128 | 610 |
| Balears, Illes | Catherine | 73 | 0.116 | 671 |
| Palmas, Las | Catherine | 68 | 0.115 | 886 |
| Almería | Catherine | 37 | 0.098 | 803 |
Listed in 45 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 7 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Catherine against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.