Kathryn
- Pronunciation
- [Kat-hryn]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Variant Of Katherine. Pure.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Kathryn
Kathryn is a modern English spelling variant of Katherine/Catherine (see separate entries on Catherine and Katherine for the Greek Aikaterine etymology, possibly from katharos meaning "pure," and the Saint Catherine of Alexandria anchor). The Y-spelling Kathryn is essentially a 19th and 20th-century American invention.
The various spellings (Kathryn, Catherine, Katherine, Cathryn) are tracked separately by SSA and represent the same underlying Greek name. The Kathryn spelling specifically appeals to parents seeking a distinctive American spelling. Notable bearers include American actress Kathryn Hahn (born 1973, the iconic American actress whose career through Marvel's WandaVision 2021 and Step Brothers 2008 made her one of the foundational early-21st-century American comedy figures); American actress Kathryn Bigelow (using Bigelow as a surname, born 1951, the iconic American filmmaker who in 2010 became the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar — for The Hurt Locker 2009); and contemporary American actress Kathryn Newton.
Kathryn held a US top-100 girls' rank from 1880 through 1955 — over seven decades of consistent American popularity. The name has receded slightly since but remains in steady use, currently sitting in the US top 300 girls' rank. The name's appeal is its layered Greek-Catholic-American pedigree combined with two firm syllables — the in-built Saint Catherine pure etymological register, the strong American mid-20th-century cultural-nostalgia anchor and Kathryn Bigelow contemporary anchor, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-Catholic and contemporary American. Common nicknames Kate (back-end shortening, also a popular standalone name on its own), Kat, Katie, Kay, Kit, Trina (back-end shortening), and the rare Ryn each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Catherine, Katherine, Kathryn, and Cathryn have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Catarina (Spanish/Portuguese), Caterina (Italian), Katarina (Slavic), Catherine (French), Käthe (German), and the original Greek Aikaterine.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Kathryn
US Popularity History (1881–2025)
Annual US births named Kathryn by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1952 with 8,504 girls named Kathryn (girl rank #48 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #729 for girls (381 US births). That's 681 places below its 1952 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Kathryn Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Kathryn the strongest states are West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Idaho.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | West Virginia | #256 | 22 |
| 2 | Pennsylvania | #299 | 361 |
| 3 | Idaho | #304 | 36 |
| 4 | South Carolina | #333 | 138 |
| 5 | Alabama | #354 | 149 |
| 6 | Kentucky | #376 | 115 |
| 7 | Arkansas | #391 | 62 |
| 8 | Nebraska | #397 | 18 |
| 9 | Tennessee | #414 | 175 |
| 10 | Mississippi | #415 | 78 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | #820 | 289 |
| 2 | Arizona | #789 | 60 |
| 3 | New York | #776 | 178 |
| 4 | Florida | #765 | 204 |
| 5 | Maryland | #703 | 69 |
| 6 | Washington | #690 | 88 |
| 7 | Texas | #662 | 483 |
| 8 | Michigan | #650 | 120 |
| 9 | Illinois | #608 | 172 |
| 10 | New Jersey | #582 | 54 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Kathryn in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Kathryn?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Kathryn to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Kathryn against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).