Katherine

470,588 people in America carry this name — ranked #96 of 923.

A name that has never gone out of use.

Say it KA thur ihn

3 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

K AE1 TH ER0 IH0 N — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 470,588 2020 Census
  • Rank #96 Common
  • Per 100,000 155.8 about 1 in 704 people

Where Katherine comes from and what it means

Greek in origin, reading literally as “pure”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Katherine name popularity by year

643,993 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1990, with 11,659 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80s 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1980s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

What goes well after Katherine

Three syllables already, so a short middle name keeps the whole from running long.

Better avoided

  • Katherine Karen — same opening
  • Katherine Nancy — runs together
  • Katherine Kathleen — same opening

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Never out of use

Katherine has been given in every decade on record — no fashion lifted it and none has dropped it.

Is Katherine used for boys or for girls?

0.1% men
470,184 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Where the name Katherine is most common in the US

In the District of Columbia the name is given 1.9 times as often as it is across the country.

  • the District of Columbia ×1.9
  • New Hampshire ×1.8
  • Connecticut ×1.7
  • Vermont ×1.6
  • Alaska ×1.5

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

The most common full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Who has this name today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 79.2%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 3.0%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 11.3%
  • Two or more races — 2.9%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 3.1%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Names built the same way as Katherine

Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.

Same rhythm — 3 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

Try it Compare Two Names

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One of those is not in the census file.

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Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Greek origin