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Cathryn vs Cattaleya

American parents have registered 16,332 Cathryns since 1880, against 966 Cattaleyas. But in 2025 it was Cattaleya that was commoner, 145 babies to 8.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Cathryn against Cattaleya, 1880 to 2025 0 100 200 300 400 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Cathryn Cattaleya

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

Of the 143 years in which either name was published, Cathryn for 134 years and Cattaleya for 9 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Cathryn Cattaleya
Total US births 16,332966
Most in one year 368165
Babies in 2025 8145
Estimated living today 11,000960
Median age today 554
Peak year 19562024
Best rank 485th girls1,374th girls
Rank in 2025 10,917th1,478th
First recorded 18822012
Girls / boys 16,332 / 0966 / 0

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 Cathryns alive today are over 55; half the Cattaleyas are over 4. That is 51 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 Cathryn Cattaleya
England and Wales 16722

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: Cathryn and Cattaleya.