Cathryn
Feminine
The first letter of this name is a nationality. Catherine with a C is French and English; Katherine with a K is German and Greek, and the spelling has been a quiet marker of where a family looked for three centuries.
How old is the name Cathryn?
Cathryn first appears in US birth records in 1882 — 143 years ago. The typical Cathryn alive today was born around 1958, making them about 67 years old. About 11,500 people named Cathryn are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Cathryn most popular?
Cathryn peaked in 1950, reaching #451 nationally. Today it ranks #10917, 10,466 places below that high. See the whole 1950 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Aikaterine to Cathryn
The story of Cathryn
Latin had no k in native words, so it wrote the Greek kappa as c, and French inherited that, which is why the French form is Catherine and the English one followed it after the Norman conquest. German kept the k, as did the Scandinavian and Slavic languages, all of which had it in their own alphabets. The result is that a single name carries a visible split: Catherine, Cathleen and Caitlin on one side, Katherine, Katarina, Katrin and Yekaterina on the other. American families have chosen between them for two centuries, often without knowing that the choice records anything. Underneath, the name's own meaning has never been established, and the h in the middle was inserted by scholars who believed it came from the Greek for pure.
Meaningnot established
Not established
Katherine's Greek original, Aikaterine, has no established etymology; the connection to katharos, pure, is a Renaissance reinterpretation. The C spelling follows French, the K follows German and the Greek. Cathryn compresses the middle syllable; the peak is 1950.
How the name formed
- Aikaterine
- Catherine
- Cathryn
Related forms: Catherine · Katharina · Yekaterina
Pronouncing Cathryn
KATH-rin
Two syllables in this spelling, stress on the first. Catherine has three for careful speakers and two for most.
Nicknames for Cathryn
Moderate
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
- 1882
- Most girls named
- 1955335 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #451reached in 1950
- Change vs 2022
- −50.0%8 in 2025, from 16
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.
Cathryn in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Catherine in English — spelling variant
- Katharina in German — same name
- Yekaterina in Russian — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Florida.
Cathryns among us
people named Cathryn are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 200,908 born in 2025 was named Cathryn
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Cathryn
- #10917
- Cathryn on the 2025 chart
- #600
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Cathryn went to 8 girls in 2025, but Kathryn is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 389, which makes it the 600th most-given girls’ name of the year — 10,317 places above the chart.
- Kathryn381
- Cathryn8
About 1 girl in 4,132 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 200,908 for Cathryn 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 Vernice test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Cathryn's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Vernice climbed just as high around 1919, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Vernice's path sketches the road Cathryn is walking now.
Cathryn 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
Cathryn beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Cathryn in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Cathy and Kate are two immediate short forms.
- The name has been in continuous use for over a thousand years.
- It exists in a local form in every European language.
- Catherine and Kathryn are both more common spellings.
- The name's meaning is genuinely unknown.
- The 1950 peak dates this form.
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What they receive
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Cathryn
Feminine · #10917 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Cathryns are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 11,500 people named Cathryn are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Cathryn?
- Cathryn is one of 2 recorded spellings. Kathryn is the more common one — 381 births in 2025 against 8 for Cathryn.
- How popular is the name Cathryn in 2025?
- Cathryn ranks #10917 among US girl names in 2025, with 8 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Cathryn?
- About 1 in every 200,908 US girls born in 2025 was named Cathryn — 8 in all.
- Will my child share the name Cathryn with classmates?
- Cathryn will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Cathryn
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Edythe#10917 · Tessie#10917 · Drusilla#10917 · Eugenie#10917 · Ivah#10917 · Karri#10917 · Claribel#10917 · Myrtle#10917
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Cathryn? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Cathryn and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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