Caitlyn
Feminine · “pure”
Caitlyn is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 52,603 girls against 34 boys since 1880.
Caitlyn is the Irish Caitlín with a y — a respelling of a respelling, since the English pronunciation of the Irish name was already a misreading before anyone changed the letters.
How old is the name Caitlyn?
Caitlyn first appears in US birth records in 1968 — 57 years ago. The typical Caitlyn alive today was born around 1999, making them about 26 years old. About 52,000 people named Caitlyn are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Caitlyn most popular?
Caitlyn peaked in 1998, reaching #115 nationally. Today it ranks #2485, 2,370 places below that high. See the whole 1998 chart.
Where it comes from
From Aikaterine to Caitlyn
The story of Caitlyn
Old French Cateline was borrowed into Irish as Caitlín, which Irish says roughly kat-LEEN. English speakers, reading rather than hearing, said KAYT-lin instead, and that misreading became the standard English name. The spellings then multiplied — Caitlin, Kaitlin, Katelyn, Caitlyn, Kaitlyn — and Caitlyn peaked in the mid-1990s.
Meaningscholars disagree
pure
Through Catherine, whose received meaning is the Greek katharos, 'pure'. That reading came after the name: the earliest recorded form, Aikaterine, is not explained by katharos, and the spelling was reshaped toward it under the influence of the saint's legend. The original sense is not recovered.
How the name formed
- Aikaterine
- Cateline
- Caitlín
- Caitlyn
Related forms: Caitlín · Caitlin · Kaitlyn · Katelyn
Pronouncing Caitlyn
KAYT-lin
Two syllables, stress on the first. The Irish original is kat-LEEN, with a different vowel and the stress at the end.
Nicknames for Caitlyn
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
- 2015 — Caitlyn Jenner's transition fills the headlines
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1968
- Most girls named
- 19982,937 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #115reached in 1998
- Change vs 2024
- −9.0%71 in 2025, from 78
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Caitlyn in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Caitlín in Irish — related form
- Caitlin in English — spelling variant
- Kaitlyn in English — spelling variant
- Katelyn in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, New York.
Caitlyns among us
people named Caitlyn are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 22,638 born in 2025 was named Caitlyn
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Caitlyn
- #2485
- Caitlyn on the 2025 chart
- #467
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Caitlyn went to 71 girls in 2025, but Kaitlyn, Caitlin and Kaitlynn and the rest below are the same name said out loud. Together the 7 spellings went to 582, which makes it the 467th most-given girls’ name of the year — 2,018 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 2,762 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 22,638 for Caitlyn itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Kelli test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Caitlyn's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Kelli climbed just as high around 1969, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Kelli's path sketches the road Caitlyn is walking now.
Caitlyn sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Caitlyn is headed
Caitlyn is easing off slowly — about 25% fewer babies a year by 2030 if the trend continues.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Caitlyn beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Caitlyn in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It stands inside the enormous Catherine family, reached by a genuinely Irish route.
- Kate and Katie are both available as short forms with their own long records.
- The C keeps the Irish spelling's opening even where the ending has been anglicized.
- The spellings of this name proliferated to an extreme degree, so this one is rarely assumed.
- The English pronunciation is a misreading of the Irish.
- It is tightly dated to the 1990s in American records.
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What they receive
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Caitlyn
Feminine · #2485 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Caitlyns are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 52,000 people named Caitlyn are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Caitlyn?
- Caitlyn is one of 7 recorded spellings. Kaitlyn is the more common one — 340 births in 2025 against 71 for Caitlyn.
- How popular is the name Caitlyn in 2025?
- Caitlyn ranks #2485 among US girl names in 2025, with 71 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Caitlyn?
- About 1 in every 22,638 US girls born in 2025 was named Caitlyn — 71 in all.
- Will my child share the name Caitlyn with classmates?
- Caitlyn will almost certainly be the only one in school.
- What explains the spikes and dips on Caitlyn's chart?
- Caitlyn faded after 2015 — Caitlyn Jenner's transition fills the headlines.
Ranked beside Caitlyn
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Laiken#2485 · Levi#2485 · Sariya#2485 · Kinlee#2485 · Serayah#2485 · Briseida#2485 · Marguerite#2485 · Ilana#2485
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Caitlyn? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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