Humanverse

Catarina vs Catherine

American parents have registered 669,611 Catherines since 1880, against 3,965 Catarinas. Catherine is still ahead, with 972 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Catarina against Catherine, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Catarina Catherine

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

Catherine 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 Catarina had 118 and Catherine had 933.

Side by side

  Catarina Catherine
Total US births 3,965669,611
Most in one year 11812,075
Babies in 2025 103972
Estimated living today 3,200381,000
Median age today 2158
Peak year 20231956
Best rank 1,736th girls28th girls
Rank in 2025 1,896th313th
First recorded 18881880
Girls / boys 3,965 / 0667,789 / 1,822

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 Catherines alive today are over 58; half the Catarinas are over 21. That is 37 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 Catarina Catherine
France 855394,885
Ireland 722,641
England and Wales 2558,442
Belgium 40547
Switzerland 267171

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: Catarina and Catherine.