Cathleen — #8956 US girls' name

What the Data Says About Cathleen

The Social Security Administration has registered 29,912 babies named Cathleen between 1896 and 2024, spanning 129 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Cathleen currently holds the #8956 rank among girls for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 1958, when 1,159 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Cathleen performed strongest in the 1950s, accumulating 9,464 births during that ten-year window. Across the 14 decades of recorded activity, Cathleen shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in New York, which accounts for 4,159 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by California and Illinois. In total, SSA state-level files list Cathleen in 49 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Cathleen in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 29,912 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.