Katja
Katja reached its high-water mark in 1998 at number 2,756, and has been recorded 949 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 14,942nd. About 930 Katjas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 26.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Katja
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 949
- Estimated living today
- 930
- Median age today
- 26
- Peak year
- 1998
- Best rank
- 2,756th
- Rank in 2025
- 14,942nd
- First recorded
- 1963
How old the living Katjas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 949 babies given the name since 1963, about 930 are alive — 98 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1999 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 Katjas
- Katja Riemann (born 1963)German actress
- Katja Kipping (born 1978)German politician
- Katja Seizinger (born 1972)German former alpine ski racer
- Katja Ebstein (born 1945)German singer
- Katja Nyberg (born 1979)Finnish-Norwegian handball player
- Katja Kassin (born 1979)German pornographic actress
- Katja Petrowskaja (born 1970)German writer and journalist
- Katja Woywood (born 1971)German actress
People named Katja with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Katja is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Katja is most concentrated in California (7.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1998
The most popular girls’ names the year Katja peaked:
Katja elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway girls | Katja | 512 | 224th |
| Switzerland girls | Katja | 443 | 147th |
| Denmark girls | Katja | 145 | 48th |
| England and Wales girls | Katja | 112 | 2,137th |
| France girls | Katja | 65 | 6,657th |
| Belgium girls | Katja | 43 | 555th |
| Poland girls | Katja | 39 birth registrations | 433rd |
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.
Katja: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Katja | 433 | 0.035% | 101st |
| French girls | Switzerland | Katja | 9 | 0.002% | 577th |
| Romansh girls | Switzerland | Katja | 1 | 0.027% | 15th |
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, Katja is most concentrated in St. Gallen, where 0.05% of children were given it – 55 of them.
Katja: rank by region
In 2001, Katja was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Katja | 571 | 7 |
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.
Katja by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 7 | 402nd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Katja 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 | Katja | 15,650 | 16,949 |
| the Netherlands girls | Katja | 1,874 | 2,085 |
| the Netherlands boys | Katja | — | 13 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026, the Netherlands on 1 January 2018 – 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 Katja lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 271 women called Katja 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Balears, Illes | Katja | 47 | 0.075 | 949 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Katja | 30 | 0.054 | 1,433 |
| Palmas, Las | Katja | 26 | 0.044 | 1,871 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Katja | 28 | 0.027 | 1,986 |
| Málaga | Katja | 17 | 0.019 | 2,293 |
| Castellón/Castelló | Katja | 5 | 0.016 | 2,669 |
Listed in 11 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 41 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
Katja 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.