Katlyn
Feminine · “pure”
Katlyn is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 18,433 girls against 5 boys since 1880.
Katlyn is Caitlín stripped of every letter English does not need. The Irish name is Catherine borrowed from Old French; this spelling is the English misreading of it, tidied.
How old is the name Katlyn?
Katlyn first appears in US birth records in 1979 — 46 years ago. The typical Katlyn alive today was born around 1997, making them about 28 years old. About 18,000 people named Katlyn are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Katlyn most popular?
Katlyn peaked in 1995, reaching #223 nationally. Today it ranks #8362, 8,139 places below that high. See the whole 1995 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Aikaterine to Katlyn
The story of Katlyn
Old French Cateline was borrowed into Irish as Caitlín, which Irish says roughly kat-LEEN. English speakers, reading the spelling rather than hearing the name, said KAYT-lin — and that misreading became the standard English form, spelled Caitlin, Kaitlin, Katelyn, Katlyn and a dozen more. The name rose very fast in America through the late 1980s, and this spelling peaked in the mid-1990s.
Meaningscholars disagree
pure
Through Catherine, whose received meaning is the Greek katharos, 'pure'. That reading came after the name: the earliest 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
- Cateline
- Caitlín
- Katlyn
Related forms: Caitlín · Caitlin · Katelyn · Kaitlyn
Pronouncing Katlyn
KAYT-lin
Two syllables, stress on the first. The Irish original is kat-LEEN, with a different vowel and the stress at the end.
Nicknames for Katlyn
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
- 19951,260 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #223reached in 1995
- Change vs 2024
- −47.8%12 in 2025, from 23
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.
Katlyn in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Caitlín in Irish — related form
- Caitlin in English — spelling variant
- Katelyn in English — spelling variant
- Kaitlyn in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: North Carolina, California, Virginia.
Katlyns among us
people named Katlyn are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 133,939 born in 2025 was named Katlyn
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 Kizzy test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Katlyn's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Kizzy climbed just as high around 1977, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Kizzy's path sketches the road Katlyn is walking now.
Katlyn 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
Katlyn beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Katlyn 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.
- The tidiest of the many English spellings, with nothing silent in it.
- Kat and Katie are both available with their own long records.
- The spellings of this name proliferated to an extreme degree, so this one is rarely assumed.
- The English pronunciation is a misreading of the Irish, and Irish speakers will say it differently.
- It is tightly dated to the 1990s.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Katlyn
Feminine · #8362 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Katlyns are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 18,000 people named Katlyn are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Katlyn in 2025?
- Katlyn ranks #8362 among US girl names in 2025, with 12 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Katlyn?
- About 1 in every 133,939 US girls born in 2025 was named Katlyn — 12 in all.
- Will my child share the name Katlyn with classmates?
- Katlyn will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Katlyn
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 Katlyn? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Katlyn and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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Which one would you pick?
Your gut first, the numbers after — the split shows once you pick.
US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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