Kathleen

girls’ nameFadedCompare

Kathleen is outside the top 1,000 in 2024, with 220 births. Its best rank was 9th, in 1949.

Rank in 2024: —outside the top 1,000
Births in 2024: 2200.01% of girls
Peak year: 195126,716 births
Best rank: #9in 1949
Since 1880: 715,129people given the name

Babies named Kathleen, by year of birthgirls

The story in the numbers

713,438 girls have been named Kathleen in the United States since 1880, according to Social Security records. The busiest single year was 1951, with 26,716 births — 1.5% of all girls recorded that year.

The name has all but left use: 220 births in 2024, against 26,716 at the peak.

Half of everyone given the name was born by 1954, and the 1950s alone account for 31%. It has spent 141 of 145 years in the top 1,000, 72 of them in the top 100 and 4 in the top 10.

It is overwhelmingly a girl’s name: 1,691 boys have also been given it, 0.24% of the total.

Rank among girls, year by year

Higher on the chart = more popularrank (gaps = outside the top 1,000)

By decade

Decade	girls named Kathleen
1880s	389
1890s	1,942
1900s	3,924
1910s	16,592
1920s	33,597
1930s	34,550
1940s	152,981
1950s	224,341
1960s	120,950
1970s	44,846
1980s	39,395
1990s	24,847
2000s	10,065
2010s	3,808
2020s	1,211

In 1951, its biggest year

Kathleen was the 10th most given girl’s name that year. The top five girls’ names of 1951 were Linda, Mary, Patricia, Deborah and Barbara. See all of 1951.

Names that rose and fell with Kathleen

Same sex, most similar popularity curve over 145 years, in five-year steps — the shape of the line, not the size.

Other spellings in the data

Cathleen29,912 ever

What this page does not tell you. The Social Security data records how many babies were given a name, not what the name means or where it comes from — so neither do we. Counts cover people with a Social Security number; names given to fewer than five babies in a year are withheld. More on the data.