Kathleen
Masculine · “little Kate”
Kathleen is given to girls far more often — 713,645 girls against 1,691 boys since 1880. See Kathleen as a girl name
Kathleen is Katherine after Irish has finished with it: a Greek name that went into medieval French, crossed to Ireland, took a Gaelic diminutive ending and came back out sounding like nothing else in English. In America it worked for decades as a signature, the name that told a parish where a family had come from. The revealing part is when it crested. Names that carry an identity almost never peak with the immigrants themselves. They peak with the grandchildren, once the identity has stopped being a liability and started being an inheritance worth announcing.
How old is the name Kathleen?
Kathleen first appears in US birth records in 1915 — 110 years ago. The typical Kathleen alive today was born around 1956, making them about 69 years old. About 1,100 people named Kathleen are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Kathleen most popular?
Kathleen peaked in 1949, reaching #923 nationally. See the whole 1949 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Cateline, the medieval French form of Katherine to Kathleen
The story of Kathleen
Ireland spent a long time talking about itself under women's names, because talking about itself plainly was dangerous. Kathleen Ni Houlihan was one of them: an old woman with four green fields taken from her, who turns up at a farmhouse door on the eve of a rising and walks back out of it as a young queen. She lived in ballads before Yeats and Lady Gregory put her on a Dublin stage at the start of the twentieth century, and the audiences did not need the allegory explained to them. That is the double life of this name. On every parish register it was an ordinary girl. In the national imagination it was the country's own alias, and a child called Kathleen was named after both at once whether or not anybody in the room said so.
Meaningscholars disagree
little Kate
The shape of the word is not in doubt: an Irish diminutive ending fixed to the short form of Katherine. The trouble is underneath. Katherine's own meaning has never been settled, and the readings offered in name books are later guesses laid over a word that was already old and already foreign when Greek received it. So little Kate is honest about the construction and silent about what Kate meant, which is as far as the evidence actually goes.
How the name formed
- Cateline, the medieval French form of Katherine
- Caitlin in Irish, with the diminutive ending
- Kathleen once English wrote down what it heard
- Kathy, Kate and Katie in daily use
Related forms: Caitlin · Caitlin · Cateline · Catrin
Pronouncing Kathleen
KATH-leen
Two syllables, stress on the first, and the th is the plain one of think rather than the one of this. Irish itself has a t where English writes th, which is why nineteenth-century clerks sometimes wrote Cathlin or Catlin and meant exactly the same name.
Nicknames for Kathleen
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
- 1915
- Most boys named
- 194956 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #923reached in 1949
- Change vs 1990
- −64.3%5 in 1991, from 14
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.
Kathleen in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Caitlin in Irish — same name
- Caitlin in Scottish Gaelic — spelling variant
- Cateline in French — related form
- Catrin in Welsh — related form
Kathleens among us
people named Kathleen 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
Kathleen 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
- Everybody can spell it and say it on the first attempt, which is unusual for a name carrying a real Gaelic ending inside it.
- It shortens in three different directions, so a child gets to choose a register rather than inheriting one.
- It sounds like an adult and like a small child equally well, which most soft names manage only at one end of a life.
- It is dated in the friendly way rather than the awkward way, but it is dated: most people will place it in a particular stretch of the last century and a particular kind of household.
- Cathleen, Caitlin and Katelyn all sit close enough that your child will spend a lifetime confirming which one is on the certificate.
- The spelling appears on the register for boys as well as girls; a boy carrying it will be correcting people constantly, because the English-speaking world reads it one way only.
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Kathleen
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Kathleens are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,100 people named Kathleen are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Kathleen in 2025?
- Kathleen is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Kathleen with classmates?
- Kathleen will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More K names
The most-given names starting with K, all years combined.
Kenneth#294 · Kevin#221 · Kyle#508 · Keith#800 · Karl#1585 · Kaleb#295 · Kurt#2258 · Kelly#1867
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Kathleen? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Kathleen and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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