Cathy

given name · English · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Cathy is a given name, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom. In Singapore it is the 17th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and French, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: A diminutive of the female given name Catherine and of its variant forms, also used as a formal given name in the 20th century.

rarermore common
  • CACanada1 in 441◐
  • IEIreland1 in 562
  • SGSingapore1 in 574

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈305K ●

across 8 countries

#343 ●

of 16M given names

5 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
538 ●

7.0M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 509 ◐

Finland

Spellings & scripts●

KathyLatin · English●4.3M records
קאסיHebrew · Hebrew●89 records
카트Hangul · Korean●6 records
เคธThai · Thai●3 records
КэссиCyrillic · Russian●2 records

3 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Kathy in US United States, GB United Kingdom, CA Canada and 13 more, Cassie in IN India, NZ New Zealand, MY Malaysia, Kati in FI Finland and Käthy in EC Ecuador.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

A diminutive of the female given name Catherine and of its variant forms, also used as a formal given name in the 20th century.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Cathy is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GB United Kingdom#120309,136300K rec.—36Kathy205
US United States#75287,8285.8M rec.1 in 1.2K288KKathy538
CA Canada#58188,483180K rec.—14Kathy221
AU Australia#118185,552171K rec.—83Kathy222
IT Italy#22939,87140K rec.—1Kathy52
PH Philippines#70929,86125K rec.——Cathy101
DE Germany#63722,73022K rec.—1Kathy114
CN China—18,84016K rec.——Kathy87
SG Singapore#1718,70819K rec.——Kathy85
IE Ireland#8116,63317K rec.—192Kathy95
RU Russia—11,05117K rec.—listedKathy38
FI Finland—10,946△3.8K rec.1 in 50912KKati18

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English2.2M74%
  • French269K9%
  • 141K5%
  • Spanish74K3%
  • Georgian30K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English2,151,67774%
French268,6169%
141,4705%
Spanish74,2333%
Georgian29,5921%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Cathy is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French given name387K records spelled Cathy11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Brazil, Argentina

    Languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Çathy, Câthy, Cáthy, Cäthy, Cãthy

  • Polish given name11K records spelled Cathy115 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Poland, Czechia, Russia

    Languages: Polish, Russian, Czech

    Also written Kathy, Katie, Katy, Кати, Kathie

72 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Cathy is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • Pet form of }\Catherine and Catharine.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • English: pet form of CATHERINE .

    as a word

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Over time●

05K10K15K19201940196019802000202011K · 1958

Show as table
Cathy in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1918–2025
Yearrecords
19185
19198
19205
19217
19225
19238
192413
192512
192617
192717
192820
192914
193025
193124
193229
193335
193447
193560
193653
193772
193889
1939144
1940195
1941312
1942483
1943606
1944680
1945824
19461,623
19472,859
19483,561
19494,407
19505,031
19515,697
19527,011
19537,301
19547,207
19558,665
195610,132
195710,325
195810,942
195910,408
19609,130
19618,211
19627,145
19636,319
19645,502
19654,151
19663,421
19672,825
19682,400
19692,520
19702,586
19712,270
19721,736
19731,435
19741,167
1975970
1976809
1977743
1978639
1979588
1980567
1981534
1982486
1983371
1984372
1985362
1986273
1987246
1988227
1989224
1990209
1991210
1992186
1993153
1994164
1995141
1996129
1997133
1998124
1999116
2000119
2001120
200293
2003103
2004104
200593
200688
200779
200861
200956
201052
201147
201256
201359
201448
201564
201653
201731
201844
201930
202032
202122
202220
202325
202420
202512

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 108 years between 1918–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

19201940196019802000Cathy O'Donnell, b. 1923Cathy Lee Crosby, b. 1944Cathy Moriarty, b. 1960Cathy Konrad, b. 1963Cathy Tyson, b. 1965Cathy McMorris Rodgers, b. 1969Cathy Weseluck, b. 1970Cathy Freeman, b. 1973Cathy Shim, b. 1980Cathy Yan, b. 1983

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence●

Attested in 75 sources across 45 countries.

Official registers attesting Cathy
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020146K#380
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)202227K#2,686
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010424#49,546
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000419#47,575
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—361#3,903
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020312#68,029
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—168#5,436
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—129#7,178
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020126#380
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)202083—
AU AustraliaNSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present)196581#92
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—71#6,738

Reference works 3

  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 575 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Cathy?
We estimate roughly 305 thousand people bear Cathy (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
In which country does Cathy have the most bearers?
Cathy is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled kathy.
How common is Cathy compared with other names?
In the United Kingdom, Cathy is the 120th most common given name of 369,273 given names recorded there.
Is Cathy a male or female name?
Cathy is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Cathy mean?
Recorded meaning: A diminutive of the female given name Catherine and of its variant forms, also used as a formal given name in the 20th century.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/cathy

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Cathy” — the 120th most common given name in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Cathy parses inside a full name →