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Katelyn vs Katharina

American parents have registered 134,206 Katelyns since 1880, against 2,121 Katharinas. Katelyn is still ahead, with 225 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Katelyn against Katharina, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Katelyn Katharina

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 108 years in which either name was published, Katharina for 59 years and Katelyn for 49 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Katelyn Katharina
Total US births 134,2062,121
Most in one year 5,97558
Babies in 2025 22518
Estimated living today 132,0001,800
Median age today 2632
Peak year 19931991
Best rank 54th girls2,242nd girls
Rank in 2025 1,076th6,325th
First recorded 19701881
Girls / boys 134,049 / 1572,121 / 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 Katharinas alive today are over 32; half the Katelyns are over 26. That is 6 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 Katelyn Katharina
England and Wales 3,22177
Ireland 2,16111
France 100525

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: Katelyn and Katharina.