Katlyn
- Pronunciation
- [Kat-lyn]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Medieval English Form Of The Irish Caitlin. Pure
- Origin
- English
About the Name Katlyn
Katlyn is a modern English respelling of Caitlin, the Irish form of Catherine, which traces back through Latin Catharina to the Greek name Aikaterine. The meaning of pure is the traditional etymology attached to the Catherine family, although some scholars link the Greek form instead to the goddess Hekate. Caitlin itself entered English-language use from Irish Gaelic, where it was the standard vernacular rendering of Katherine, and Katlyn represents a purely phonetic respelling of that Irish form with no independent ancient etymology of its own. Recorded variants include Katlin, Katlynn, Katlynne, and Kitlyn.
In SSA records, Katlyn first entered the female top-1000 in 2000 at its best rank of #330 — suggesting it arrived at the chart already in decline — and accumulated 4,665 top-1000 births across a brief eight-year run. The name faded quickly through the mid-2000s as the broader Caitlin/Kaitlyn/Katelyn family fragmented across many competing spellings: #619 with 457 births in 2005, #788 with 348 births in 2006, and a final tracked appearance at #978 with 275 births in 2007.
The recorded variants Katlin, Katlynn, Katlynne, and Kitlyn reflect the wide spelling variation within this phonetic family. Katlyn's relatively compact top-1000 window and modest birth totals mark it as one of the more peripheral members of the Caitlin family tree, distinguishable from the more common Katelyn primarily by the dropped middle vowel — a streamlined look that could not ultimately sustain broad national traction on its own.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Katlyn
US Popularity History (2000–2007)
Annual US births named Katlyn by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2000 with 962 girls named Katlyn (girl rank #330 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2007, ranked #978 for girls (275 US births). That's 648 places below its 2000 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 Katlyn Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2003–2012 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 Katlyn the strongest states are West Virginia, Arkansas, Mississippi.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | West Virginia | #182 | 45 |
| 2 | Arkansas | #355 | 46 |
| 3 | Mississippi | #376 | 83 |
| 4 | Kentucky | #394 | 93 |
| 5 | Missouri | #472 | 80 |
| 6 | South Carolina | #481 | 73 |
| 7 | Alabama | #492 | 90 |
| 8 | Tennessee | #499 | 147 |
| 9 | Wisconsin | #509 | 43 |
| 10 | North Carolina | #510 | 142 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2003–2012. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Katlyn in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Katlin | Medieval English Form Of The Irish Caitlin. Pure | Female | English |
| Katlynn | Medieval English Form Of The Irish Caitlin. Pure | Female | English |
| Katlynne | Medieval English Form Of The Irish Caitlin. Pure | Female | English |
| Kitlyn | Medieval English Form Of The Irish Caitlin. Pure | Female | English |
Looking for names like Katlyn?
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 Katlyn to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Katlyn against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).