Katharine
Katharine is a girl's name that peaked in 1982, when it was the 262nd most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 4,878th. About 28,000 Katharines are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 42.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Katharine boys named Katharine
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 41,241
- Estimated living today
- 28,000
- Median age today
- 42
- Peak year
- 1982
- Best rank
- 262nd
- Rank in 2025
- 4,878th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 41,230 / 11
How old the living Katharines are
born that year still alive today
Of the 41,241 babies given the name since 1880, about 28,000 are alive — 69 in every hundred. Roughly 1,500 of them are children and 5,400 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1983 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.
Where the name comes from
Origin Ancient Greek
A variant spelling of Catherine, based on the folk etymology that it would derive from Greek καθαρός (katharos "pure").
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Katharines
- Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003)American actress
- Katharine Ross (born 1943)American actress
- Katharine Graham (1917–2001)American publisher, editor and author
- Katharine McPhee (born 1984)American recording artist, singer and songwriter
- Katharine, Duchess of Kent (1933–2025)member of the British royal family
- Katharine Isabelle (born 1981)Canadian actress
- Katharine Burr Blodgett (1898–1979)American physicist
- Katharine Lee Bates (1859–1929)American poet and songwriter
People named Katharine with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Katharine is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Katharine is most concentrated in the District of Columbia (2.8×), Connecticut (2.7×), Massachusetts (2.4×), Maryland (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1982
The most popular girls’ names the year Katharine peaked:
Katharine elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Katharine | 1,130 | 258th |
| Scotland girls | Katharine | 397 | 178th |
| Ireland girls | Katharine | 51 | 386th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Katharine | 11 | 282nd |
| France girls | Katharine | 10 | 2,504th |
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.
Katharine 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 | Katharine | 14 | 40 |
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
Katharine 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.