Katherine — #175 US girls' name

What the Data Says About Katherine

The Social Security Administration has registered 649,238 babies named Katherine between 1880 and 2024, spanning 145 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Katherine currently holds the #175 rank among girls for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 1990, when 11,627 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Katherine performed strongest in the 1980s, accumulating 99,176 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Katherine shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in California, which accounts for 60,523 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by New York and Texas. In total, SSA state-level files list Katherine in 51 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Katherine 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 649,238 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.