Kathy
Kathy is a girl's name that peaked in 1958, when it was the 14th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 3,249th. About 275,000 Kathys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 66.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Kathy boys named Kathy
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 334,870
- Estimated living today
- 275,000
- Median age today
- 66
- Peak year
- 1958
- Best rank
- 14th
- Rank in 2025
- 3,249th
- First recorded
- 1910
- Girls / boys
- 334,131 / 739
How old the living Kathys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 334,870 babies given the name since 1910, about 275,000 are alive — 82 in every hundred. Roughly 2,200 of them are children and 165,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1959 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.
Notable Kathys
- Kathy Bates (born 1948)American film actress and director
- Kathy Hochul (born 1958)57th governor of state New York since 2021
- Kathy Acker (1947–1997)American novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet
- Kathy Baker (born 1950)American actress
- Kathy Griffin (born 1960)American actress and comedian
- Kathy Reichs (born 1948)American writer and forensic anthropologist
- Kathy Ireland (born 1963)American model and businesswoman
- Kathy Najimy (born 1957)American actress
People named Kathy with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Kathy is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Kathy is most concentrated in West Virginia (1.9×), Kentucky (1.6×), Indiana (1.6×), Iowa (1.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1958
The most popular girls’ names the year Kathy peaked:
Kathy elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Kathy | 4,565 | 205th |
| Ireland girls | Kathy | 327 | 248th |
| England and Wales girls | Kathy | 111 | 1,287th |
| Belgium girls | Kathy | 97 | 396th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Kathy | 3 | 358th |
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.
Kathy: rank by region
In 2002, Kathy was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Kathy | 699 | 5 |
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.
Kathy by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 2 | 538th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Kathy 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Kathy | 31 | 34 |
A count of people on a register – 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.
Related names
Kathy 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.