Catherine

girls’ nameFallingCompare

Catherine is ranked 320th among girls in 2024 (955 births). Its best rank was 18th, in 1914, 1917.

Rank in 2024: #320up 10 from 2023
Births in 2024: 9550.06% of girls
Peak year: 195612,057 births
Best rank: #18first in 1914
Since 1880: 668,624people given the name

Babies named Catherine, by year of birthgirls

The story in the numbers

666,802 girls have been named Catherine in the United States since 1880, according to Social Security records. The busiest single year was 1956, with 12,057 births — 0.60% of all girls recorded that year.

It is falling: its share of births is 60% or less of what it was ten years ago (rank 170 → 320).

Half of everyone given the name was born by 1952, and the 1950s alone account for 16%. It has spent 145 of 145 years in the top 1,000, 121 of them in the top 100.

It is overwhelmingly a girl’s name: 1,822 boys have also been given it, 0.27% of the total.

Rank among girls, year by year

Higher on the chart = more popularrank (gaps = outside the top 1,000)

By decade

Decade	girls named Catherine
1880s	8,915
1890s	14,502
1900s	22,007
1910s	65,823
1920s	78,881
1930s	50,026
1940s	62,086
1950s	108,837
1960s	76,787
1970s	43,864
1980s	42,435
1990s	40,759
2000s	29,701
2010s	17,151
2020s	5,028

In 1956, its biggest year

Catherine was the 28th most given girl’s name that year. The top five girls’ names of 1956 were Mary, Debra, Linda, Deborah and Susan. See all of 1956.

Names that rose and fell with Catherine

Same sex, most similar popularity curve over 145 years, in five-year steps — the shape of the line, not the size.

Other spellings in the data

What this page does not tell you. The Social Security data records how many babies were given a name, not what the name means or where it comes from — so neither do we. Counts cover people with a Social Security number; names given to fewer than five babies in a year are withheld. More on the data.