Cathleen

girls:

29.9k births since 1896

#813 (86th percentile)

boys:

10 births since 1953

#4576 (0th percentile)

overall:

29.9k births since 1896

#1471 (81st percentile)

Popularity Trends

The name Cathleen is the #1,471 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 29,908 recorded births since 1896. This represents the 81.0% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 81.0% of all names). For girls, it ranks #813 (85.8% percentile) for all time with 29,898 births since 1896. For boys, it ranks #4,576 (0.2% percentile) for all time with 10 births since 1953.

Cathleen first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1896 (1896 for girls and 1953 for boys). Birth data for Cathleen is available in 126 out of the 128 years between 1896 and 2023 (126 years for girls and 2 years for boys). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.

The name Cathleen has been given almost exclusively to girls, with 100.0% of all recorded births being female.

For girls, Cathleen reached its peak popularity in 1958, achieving the 67.4% percentile (ranked #250) with 561 births per million. The name was most common in 1958, with 561 births per million (ranked 67.4% percentile). Since reaching a high point in 2009, the popularity of this name for girls has been declining. Currently, Cathleen ranks #945 for girls (0.2% percentile) with 4 births per million, which is 0.7% of its peak share of births.

For boys, Cathleen reached its peak popularity in 1953, achieving the 0.0% percentile (ranked #606) with 2 births per million. The name was most common in 1953, with 2 births per million (ranked 0.0% percentile). There have been no recorded male births with this name since 1964.

This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Cathleen".

1896 2023 18962023

Key Statistics

Total Births
29,898
Peak Births
1,159
Peak Year
1958
First Recorded
1896
Peak Percentile
67.4%
Current Percentile
0.2%
Peak Rank
#250
Current Rank
#945
Female statistics
Total Births
10
Peak Births
5
Peak Year
1953
First Recorded
1953
Peak Percentile
0.0%
Current Percentile
Peak Rank
#606
Current Rank
Male statistics

How to Pronounce Cathleen

Our model has identified 3 different pronunciations for the name Cathleen. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.

Our model is 50.0% confident that Cathleen is pronounced as KATH-leen, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is KATH-LEEN, at 40.6% confidence, with 2 syllables.

Possible Additional Pronunciations

If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Cathleen? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Cathleen. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Cathleen, please vote using the thumbs up button.

About Pronunciation Data

Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.

For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.

The raw pronunciations shown (like K AE1 TH L IY0 N) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.

Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.

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