Catherina
Feminine
Catherina is the Latin shape of a name that English long ago cut down. It is the form the Church used, the form Dutch and German families brought with them, and the one that shows most clearly how long the name is before English gets at it.
How old is the name Catherina?
Catherina first appears in US birth records in 1900 — 125 years ago. The typical Catherina alive today was born around 1974, making them about 51 years old. About 800 people named Catherina are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Catherina most popular?
Catherina peaked in 1900, reaching #1561 nationally. See the whole 1900 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Aikaterine to Catherina
The story of Catherina
Two bearers show the range the name has carried. Catherine of Aragon, a Spanish princess married into England, was left as regent while her husband campaigned in France — and it was during her regency that an English army destroyed a Scottish one at Flodden and killed its king. She wrote to Henry offering to send him the dead king's coat. Decades later, refusing to accept the annulment of that marriage, she held out against the king, the court and eventually the whole machinery of a new church, and never gave way. The other is Shakespeare's Katherina, whose final speech in The Taming of the Shrew is the most argued-over passage in the comedies — read as surrender, as irony, or as a bargain struck in public, depending on the production.
Meaningnot established
Not established
The Greek original, Aikaterine, has never been explained. The familiar gloss of pure comes from katharos, a Greek word for clean, attached to the name long after it was in use — and it is why the h was pushed into the spelling in the first place. The h is a fossil of somebody's guess, not evidence of a meaning.
How the name formed
- Aikaterine
- Catharina
- Catherina
Related forms: Catharina · Katharina · Caterina · Ekaterina · Catarina
Pronouncing Catherina
kath-uh-REE-nuh
Four syllables with the stress on the third. Dutch and German speakers say it with a hard t rather than the English th.
Nicknames for Catherina
High
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1900
- Most girls named
- 199822 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1561reached in 1900
- Change vs 2022
- −37.5%5 in 2024, from 8
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.
Catherina in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Catharina in Dutch — same name
- Katharina in German — same name
- Caterina in Italian — same name
- Ekaterina in Russian — same name
- Catarina in Portuguese — same name
Catherinas among us
people named Catherina are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Catherina sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- It is the full, formal version of one of the most established names in Europe, and every language has its own form of it.
- It carries an unusually deep bench of short forms, several of which sound nothing like each other.
- The length gives a child a formal register to grow into.
- It will be shortened to Catherine or Katrina by people who assume the long form is a mistake.
- The C and K spellings both exist in every country, and hers will be swapped constantly.
- The pure reading she will be taught at school is a guess from late antiquity, not a fact.
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Catherina
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Catherinas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 800 people named Catherina are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Catherina in 2025?
- Catherina is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Catherina with classmates?
- Catherina will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More C names
The most-given names starting with C, all years combined.
Carol#2239 · Cynthia#1013 · Catherine#313 · Christine#1272 · Carolyn#1222 · Christina#770 · Charlotte#2 · Cheryl#4352
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Catherina? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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