Catrina
Feminine · “Greek Aikaterine”
La Catrina is an etching of a skeleton in an enormous feathered hat, drawn by Jose Guadalupe Posada around 1910 to mock Mexicans who denied their Indigenous ancestry and dressed as Europeans. Diego Rivera named her and put her in a mural. She is now the central image of the Day of the Dead.
How old is the name Catrina?
Catrina first appears in US birth records in 1950 — 75 years ago. The typical Catrina alive today was born around 1981, making them about 44 years old. About 9,800 people named Catrina are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Catrina most popular?
Catrina peaked in 1973, reaching #451 nationally. Today it ranks #8362, 7,911 places below that high. See the whole 1973 chart.
Where it comes from
From Aikaterine to Catrina
The story of Catrina
Posada was a printmaker who produced thousands of broadsheet illustrations, many of them calaveras, satirical skeleton pictures published around the Day of the Dead. The one now called La Catrina was originally titled La Calavera Garbancera, the chickpea-seller's skull, a term for a person of Indigenous descent selling chickpeas and affecting European manners. The joke is that under the finery everyone is the same skeleton. Rivera included her, given a full body and a shawl, in his 1947 mural Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Central, standing between Posada and Rivera himself as a boy, and gave her the name Catrina, which is Mexican slang for a well-dressed woman. From there she became the standard figure of the holiday, reproduced in sugar, papier-mache and face paint every November.
Meaningscholars disagree
Greek Aikaterine, meaning unresolved
Catrina is a Spanish and Italian form of Catherine, whose origin is genuinely unsettled: the Greek Aikaterine is older than any of its explanations, and the connection to katharos, pure, is a later Christian reinterpretation that changed the spelling. In Mexico the word catrina also names the skeleton figure of the Day of the Dead, and the two coincide. It peaks in the American data in 1973.
How the name formed
- Aikaterine
- Catalina
- Catrina
Related forms: Catalina · Caterina · Katrina
Pronouncing Catrina
kah-TREE-nah
Three syllables, stress on the second. The English Katrina is kuh-TREE-nah and is said the same way. Catalina, the fuller Spanish form, has four syllables.
Nicknames for Catrina
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
- 1950
- Most girls named
- 1980454 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #451reached in 1973
- Change vs 2023
- 0.0%12 in 2025, from 12
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.
Catrina in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Catalina in Spanish — related form
- Caterina in Italian — same name
- Katrina in English — spelling variant
Catrinas among us
people named Catrina are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 133,939 born in 2025 was named Catrina
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Catrina
- #8362
- Catrina on the 2025 chart
- #865
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Catrina went to 12 girls in 2025, but Katrina is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 95, which makes it the 865th most-given girls’ name of the year — 7,497 places above the chart.
- Katrina83
- Catrina12
About 1 girl in 16,919 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 133,939 for Catrina 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 Cathryn test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Catrina's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Cathryn climbed just as high around 1950, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Cathryn's path sketches the road Catrina is walking now.
Catrina 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
Catrina beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Catrina in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The name family is one of the oldest and most widespread in Europe.
- Cat and Trina are two very different short forms.
- It is at home in Spanish, Italian and English.
- In Mexico the word names a famous skeleton figure.
- Katrina with a K carries a strong association with a 2005 hurricane.
- The meaning of the underlying Greek name is genuinely unknown.
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What they receive
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Catrina
Feminine · #8362 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Catrinas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 9,800 people named Catrina are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Catrina?
- Catrina is one of 2 recorded spellings. Katrina is the more common one — 83 births in 2025 against 12 for Catrina.
- How popular is the name Catrina in 2025?
- Catrina ranks #8362 among US girl names in 2025, with 12 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Catrina?
- About 1 in every 133,939 US girls born in 2025 was named Catrina — 12 in all.
- Will my child share the name Catrina with classmates?
- Catrina will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Catrina
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 Catrina? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Catrina and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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