Cathy
Feminine · “pure”
Cathy is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 170,303 girls against 343 boys since 1880.
Cathy is Catherine with the Latin c kept and the rest cut away. It is the same name as Kathy in speech and a different one on paper, and the split between the two spellings runs straight down the middle of the English-speaking world.
How old is the name Cathy?
Cathy first appears in US birth records in 1918 — 107 years ago. The typical Cathy alive today was born around 1957, making them about 68 years old. About 144,000 people named Cathy are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Cathy most popular?
Cathy peaked in 1958, reaching #34 nationally. Today it ranks #8362, 8,328 places below that high. See the whole 1958 chart.
Cathy appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
From Aikaterine to Cathy
The story of Cathy
Catherine with a C is the French and Latin-facing spelling, Katherine with a K the Greek-facing one, and English has used both for centuries without ever settling. The Cathy clipping followed whichever parent a family used. Its most famous bearer in English literature is the Catherine of Wuthering Heights, called Cathy throughout, published in 1847 — and the name of that novel's second-generation Cathy too, which is part of how the book makes its argument. American registration of the short form on its own peaked in the late 1950s.
Meaningscholars disagree
pure
The received meaning is the Greek katharos, 'pure', but that reading was applied to the name later than the name itself. The oldest recorded form, Aikaterine, is not explained by katharos, and the spelling drifted toward it under the influence of the saint's legend. What the name meant originally is not recovered.
How the name formed
- Aikaterine
- Catharina
- Catherine
- Cathy
Related forms: Cathy · Caitlín · Caterina · Catalina
Pronouncing Cathy
KATH-ee
Two syllables, stress on the first, th as in 'thin'. The c is hard; nothing about the spelling changes the sound.
Nicknames for Cathy
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
- 1918
- Most girls named
- 195910,408 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #34reached in 1958
- Change vs 2023
- −52.0%12 in 2025, from 25
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.
Cathy in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Cathy in French — same name
- Caitlín in Irish — related form
- Caterina in Italian — related form
- Catalina in Spanish — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, New York, Texas.
Cathys among us
people named Cathy are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 133,939 born in 2025 was named Cathy
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Cathy
- #8362
- Cathy on the 2025 chart
- #900
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Cathy went to 12 girls in 2025, but Kathy is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 60, which makes it the 900th most-given girls’ name of the year — 7,462 places above the chart.
- Kathy48
- Cathy12
About 1 girl in 26,788 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 133,939 for Cathy 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 Bonnie test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Cathy's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Bonnie climbed just as high around 1941, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Bonnie's path sketches the road Cathy is walking now.
Cathy 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
Cathy beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Cathy in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Catherine stands behind it, one of the most widely used women's names in European history.
- It is short, phonetic and legible at a glance in any handwriting.
- Cousins exist in French, Italian, Spanish, Irish and Russian, so the name travels.
- Cathy or Kathy is an unavoidable question at every introduction, and neither spelling has won.
- It is firmly tied to the mid-twentieth century in American ears.
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What they receive
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Cathy
Feminine · #8362 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Cathys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 144,000 people named Cathy are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Cathy?
- Cathy is one of 2 recorded spellings. Kathy is the more common one — 48 births in 2025 against 12 for Cathy.
- How popular is the name Cathy in 2025?
- Cathy ranks #8362 among US girl names in 2025, with 12 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Cathy?
- About 1 in every 133,939 US girls born in 2025 was named Cathy — 12 in all.
- Will my child share the name Cathy with classmates?
- Cathy will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Cathy
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Lona#8362 · Peggy#8362 · Leda#8362 · Margarette#8362 · Rella#8362 · Evalena#8362 · Vashti#8362 · Nona#8362
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Cathy? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Cathy and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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