Katherine

Where Katherine comes from

The dictionaries list Katherine as a given name — a female given name from Ancient Greek, a popular spelling variant of Catherine — but don't trace where it came from. The record below is what the SSA data shows.

  • Ancient Greek
  • 3 syllables
  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1880
    First SSA year
    Already #53 among girls — 502 babies in the first year on record.
  2. 1918
    Katherine Johnson born
    African-American mathematician
  3. 1978
    Katherine Heigl born
    American actress
  4. 1991
    Peak, #25
    11,495 babies named Katherine — more than any year before or since.
  5. 2008
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #45.
In the dictionary
  • A female given name from Ancient Greek, a popular spelling variant of Catherine.
Namesakes
  • Katherine Johnson · African-American mathematician, 1918–2020
  • Katherine Heigl · American actress, born 1978
  • Katherine Mansfield · New Zealand author, 1888–1923
  • Katherine Langford · Australian actress, born 1996
  • Katherine Anne Porter · American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist, 1890–1980

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.