Katelynn
Feminine · “pure”
Katelynn is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 30,680 girls against 11 boys since 1880.
Katelynn is Caitlín at the end of a long chain of respellings — the Irish form of Catherine, misread by English speakers and then rewritten twice to match the misreading.
How old is the name Katelynn?
Katelynn first appears in US birth records in 1979 — 46 years ago. The typical Katelynn alive today was born around 2001, making them about 24 years old. About 30,500 people named Katelynn are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Katelynn most popular?
Katelynn peaked in 1998, reaching #210 nationally. Today it ranks #2719, 2,509 places below that high. See the whole 1998 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Aikaterine to Katelynn
The story of Katelynn
Old French Cateline was borrowed into Irish as Caitlín, which Irish says roughly kat-LEEN. English speakers, reading rather than hearing, said KAYT-lin, and that misreading became the standard English name. The spellings then multiplied past counting — Caitlin, Katelyn, Kaitlyn, Katelynn — and this doubled-n form peaked in the early 2000s.
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
- Caitlín
- Katelyn
- Katelynn
Related forms: Caitlín · Katelyn · Kaitlyn
Pronouncing Katelynn
KAYT-lin
Two syllables, stress on the first. Every spelling in the family is said identically.
Nicknames for Katelynn
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
- 1979
- Most girls named
- 19981,457 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #210reached in 1998
- Change vs 2024
- −22.2%63 in 2025, from 81
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.
Katelynn in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Caitlín in Irish — related form
- Katelyn in English — spelling variant
- Kaitlyn in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Florida.
Katelynns among us
people named Katelynn are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 25,512 born in 2025 was named Katelynn
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Katelynn
- #2719
- Katelynn on the 2025 chart
- #679
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Katelynn went to 63 girls in 2025, but Katelyn is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 288, which makes it the 679th most-given girls’ name of the year — 2,040 places above the chart.
- Katelyn225
- Katelynn63
About 1 girl in 5,581 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 25,512 for Katelynn 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 Patrice test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Katelynn's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Patrice climbed just as high around 1958, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Patrice's path sketches the road Katelynn is walking now.
Katelynn 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 Katelynn is headed
Katelynn is easing off slowly — about 22% 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.
Katelynn beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Katelynn 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 Lynn are both available as short forms with their own long records.
- The sound is entirely transparent to English speakers.
- The spellings of this name proliferated further than almost any other, so this one is never assumed.
- The English pronunciation is a misreading of the Irish.
- It is tightly dated to the 1990s and 2000s.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Katelynn
Feminine · #2719 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Katelynns are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 30,500 people named Katelynn are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Katelynn?
- Katelynn is one of 2 recorded spellings. Katelyn is the more common one — 225 births in 2025 against 63 for Katelynn.
- How popular is the name Katelynn in 2025?
- Katelynn ranks #2719 among US girl names in 2025, with 63 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Katelynn?
- About 1 in every 25,512 US girls born in 2025 was named Katelynn — 63 in all.
- Will my child share the name Katelynn with classmates?
- Katelynn will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Katelynn
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Ryver#2719 · Kaliana#2719 · Morrigan#2719 · Asher#2719 · Aditi#2719 · Carley#2719 · Betsy#2719 · Emy#2719
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Katelynn? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Katelynn and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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