Katrina

90,135 people in America carry this name — ranked #589 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it kuht REE nuh

3 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

K AH0 T R IY1 N AH0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 90,135 2020 Census
  • Rank #589 Familiar
  • As a surname No not above the reporting threshold

What Katrina means and where it comes from

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.

Katrina through the years

101,134 babies were given this name since 1895. The busiest year was 1980, with 3,414 of them.

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.

Middle names for Katrina

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

Better avoided

  • Katrina Karen — same opening
  • Katrina Ashley — runs together
  • Katrina Amy — runs together

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.

Going quiet

Katrina has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to Generation X.

Is Katrina a boy's or a girl's name?

0.1% men
90,046 women

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

Spellings of Katrina

Katrina is how 6.7% of them spell it — 1,352,455 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 60.1%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 21.4%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 8.1%
  • Two or more races — 4.7%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 4.8%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.9%

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 with the same rhythm as Katrina

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 3 syllables, stress on the second

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

Where the name Katrina is most common in the US

In Alaska the name is given 2.1 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Alaska ×2.1
  • the District of Columbia ×2.1
  • Maine ×1.8
  • Oregon ×1.5
  • Mississippi ×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.

Try it Name Matcher

Enter a surname and hear which first names sit well with it.

The matcher is confident about clashes — rhymes, doubled sounds, colliding stresses — because those are facts about the phonemes. Ordering the names that pass is a set of rules, not a verdict on beauty.

Open Name Matcher on its own page

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