Kathryn
Feminine · “unknown”
Kathryn is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 455,423 girls against 1,092 boys since 1880. See Kathryn as a boy name
Kathryn is the American compression of Katherine, and the letter it kept is more interesting than the ones it lost. The th in the middle of this name was put there in the Middle Ages by people who had decided, wrongly, that the name came from a Greek word for pure. The h is a piece of medieval wishful thinking that every spelling in the family has carried ever since.
How old is the name Kathryn?
Kathryn was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Kathryn alive today was born around 1960, making them about 65 years old. About 321,000 people named Kathryn are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Kathryn most popular?
Kathryn peaked in 1951, reaching #45 nationally. Today it ranks #729, 684 places below that high. See the whole 1951 chart.
Where it comes from
From a Greek name of unrecovered meaning to Kathryn
The story of Kathryn
Kathryn Bigelow spent twenty years making films about men doing dangerous work — surfers robbing banks, a bomb disposal team in Iraq — before becoming the first woman to win the Academy Award for directing, in a year when the film she beat was made by her former husband. She had trained as a painter and come to film through the art world, and she has been consistently uninterested in being described as a woman director, which is a position she has had to restate in nearly every interview she has given since. The award had existed for more than eighty years before it went to a woman.
Meaningscholars disagree
unknown, though long read as pure
The oldest form of the name is Greek and its meaning has never been recovered — it may not be Greek at all, and the earliest spellings do not contain a th. What happened is that medieval scholars connected it to katharos, the Greek word for clean or pure, and rewrote the spelling to match the etymology they preferred. The letter stayed and the etymology did not survive scrutiny. Kathryn preserves that mistake faithfully while dropping the ending that would show where the name actually came from.
How the name formed
- a Greek name of unrecovered meaning
- medieval scholars insert a th to match a preferred etymology
- Katherine, Catherine and Katharine in English use
- Kathryn appears as an American contraction
- an American peak at the middle of the century
Related forms: Catherine · Yekaterina · Caitriona · Katherine
Pronouncing Kathryn
KATH-rin
Two syllables in American speech, where Katherine usually has three. That compression is what the spelling records: the ending was already being swallowed, and Kathryn simply wrote down what people were saying.
Nicknames for Kathryn
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
- 1880
- Most girls named
- 19518,460 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #45reached in 1951
- Change vs 2022
- −15.7%381 in 2025, from 452
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.
Kathryn in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Catherine in French — same name
- Yekaterina in Russian — same name
- Caitriona in Irish — same name
- Katherine in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, Pennsylvania, California.
Kathryns among us
people named Kathryn are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 4,219 born in 2025 was named Kathryn
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Joanne test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Kathryn's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Joanne climbed just as high around 1935, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Joanne's path sketches the road Kathryn is walking now.
Kathryn has held the top-100 across 11 different decades — it has never depended on fashion, and names like that read the same at any age.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Kathryn is headed
Kathryn is easing off slowly — about 17% fewer babies a year by 2030 if the trend continues.
High 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.
Kathryn beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Kathryn in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It offers the largest set of usable short forms of almost any English name — Kate, Kathy, Kit, Katie.
- It has been in continuous use for eight hundred years without ever becoming a costume.
- The spelling is distinctly American and distinctly twentieth-century while the name itself is neither.
- There are at least six accepted spellings of this name and she will spell hers out every time.
- The compressed form is closely associated with the middle of the last century in a way the fuller spellings are not.
- The meaning everybody will tell her — pure — is an old mistake rather than a fact.
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What they receive
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Kathryn
Feminine · #729 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Kathryns are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 321,000 people named Kathryn are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Kathryn in 2025?
- Kathryn ranks #729 among US girl names in 2025, with 381 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Kathryn?
- About 1 in every 4,219 US girls born in 2025 was named Kathryn — 381 in all.
- Will my child share the name Kathryn with classmates?
- Kathryn will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Kathryn
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Bristol#728 · Iliana#730 · Abby#731 · Keilani#727 · Taytum#732 · Theodora#725 · Gwen#725 · Ramona#733
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Kathryn? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Kathryn and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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