Kathryn
The girl's name Kathryn has been in the national records since 1880, with 456,515 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 729th. About 315,000 Kathryns are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 48.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Kathryn boys named Kathryn
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 456,515
- Estimated living today
- 315,000
- Median age today
- 48
- Peak year
- 1952
- Best rank
- 48th
- Rank in 2025
- 729th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 455,423 / 1,092
How old the living Kathryns are
born that year still alive today
Of the 456,515 babies given the name since 1880, about 315,000 are alive — 69 in every hundred. Roughly 16,000 of them are children and 100,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1977 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
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Kathryns
- Kathryn Bigelow (born 1951)American filmmaker
- Kathryn Hahn (born 1973)American actress
- Kathryn D. Sullivan (born 1951)American astronaut
- Kathryn Newton (born 1997)American actress
- Kathryn Grayson (1922–2010)American actress and coloratura soprano
- Kathryn Morris (born 1969)American actress
- Kathryn Joosten (1939–2012)American actress
- Kathryn Stockett (born 1969)American writer
People named Kathryn with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Kathryn is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Kathryn is most concentrated in Minnesota (1.6×), Iowa (1.6×), Nebraska (1.5×), Wisconsin (1.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1952
The most popular girls’ names the year Kathryn peaked:
Kathryn elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Zealand girls | Kathryn | 5,104 | 36th |
| England and Wales girls | Kathryn | 4,791 | 86th |
| Scotland girls | Kathryn | 2,620 | 58th |
| Ireland girls | Kathryn | 1,250 | 150th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Kathryn | 433 | 40th |
| France girls | Kathryn | 115 | 927th |
| Poland girls | Kathryn | 6 birth registrations | 729th |
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.
Kathryn 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 | Kathryn | 23 | 45 |
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
Kathryn 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.