Katja
given name · German · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Katja is a given name, most frequently recorded in Germany. It appears chiefly in German and Finnish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Katja (m.fl. former) är ursprungligen ryska smekformer till → Katarina.
- FIFinland1 in 329◐
- DEGermany1 in 659
- BRBrazil1 in 1.3K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈243K ●
- #739 ●
- 6 ●
- Sources
- 284 ●
- 1 in 244 ◐
across 14 countries
of 16M given names
recorded for this name
517K records
Official registry-verified
Slovenia
Spellings & scripts●
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Katia in BR Brazil, US United States, PE Peru and 14 more and קטיה in FR France, IL Israel.
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●
Katja (m.fl. former) är ursprungligen ryska smekformer till → Katarina. I både den rikssvenska och finlandssvenska almanackan 25 november.
Sources 1
- Förnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | #138 | 184,164 | 165K rec. | — | — | Katja | 250 |
| BR Brazil | #167 | 157,594 | 98K rec. | 1 in 1.3K | 164K | Katia | 192 |
| PE Peru | #536 | 54,277 | 43K rec. | — | — | Katia | 61 |
| MX Mexico | #577 | 49,299 | 32K rec. | — | 72 | Katia | 165 |
| FR France | — | 31,140△ | 126 rec. | 1 in 2.2K | 31K | קטיה | 9 |
| AR Argentina | — | 27,066 | 15K rec. | — | 94 | Katia | 56 |
| IT Italy | #350 | 22,150 | 19K rec. | — | 28 | Katia | 144 |
| FI Finland | — | 16,958△ | 1.7K rec. | 1 in 329 | 18K | Katja | 64 |
| AT Austria | #233 | 12,035 | 2.1K rec. | — | 2.8K | Katja | 108 |
| US United States | — | 11,414 | 64K rec. | 1 in 29K | 11K | Katia | 284 |
| SV El Salvador | #235 | 10,841 | 7K rec. | — | — | Katia | 37 |
| CL Chile | #665 | 9,206 | 1K rec. | — | 5 | Katia | 67 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- German209K45%
- Finnish78K17%
- Russian71K15%
- Hungarian18K4%
- English17K4%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| German | 208,696 | 45% |
| Finnish | 78,416 | 17% |
| Russian | 70,920 | 15% |
| Hungarian | 17,511 | 4% |
| English | 17,331 | 4% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Katja is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, aus dem Russischen übernommener
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Pet form of KATHARINA.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In izh, a female given name, equivalent to English Kate
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1963 | 6 |
| 1965 | 9 |
| 1966 | 6 |
| 1967 | 9 |
| 1968 | 10 |
| 1969 | 11 |
| 1970 | 13 |
| 1971 | 13 |
| 1972 | 14 |
| 1973 | 8 |
| 1974 | 10 |
| 1975 | 9 |
| 1976 | 9 |
| 1977 | 11 |
| 1978 | 8 |
| 1979 | 12 |
| 1980 | 9 |
| 1981 | 6 |
| 1982 | 6 |
| 1983 | 7 |
| 1984 | 10 |
| 1985 | 6 |
| 1986 | 10 |
| 1987 | 10 |
| 1988 | 11 |
| 1989 | 13 |
| 1990 | 19 |
| 1991 | 10 |
| 1992 | 20 |
| 1993 | 15 |
| 1994 | 40 |
| 1995 | 25 |
| 1996 | 17 |
| 1997 | 26 |
| 1998 | 48 |
| 1999 | 33 |
| 2000 | 29 |
| 2001 | 20 |
| 2002 | 28 |
| 2003 | 35 |
| 2004 | 27 |
| 2005 | 25 |
| 2006 | 22 |
| 2007 | 22 |
| 2008 | 22 |
| 2009 | 17 |
| 2010 | 19 |
| 2011 | 17 |
| 2012 | 13 |
| 2013 | 22 |
| 2014 | 7 |
| 2015 | 16 |
| 2016 | 14 |
| 2017 | 9 |
| 2018 | 19 |
| 2019 | 15 |
| 2020 | 9 |
| 2021 | 14 |
| 2022 | 7 |
| 2023 | 8 |
| 2024 | 9 |
| 2025 | 5 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 62 years between 1963–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Katja Riemannb. 1963DEGerman actress
- Sussi la Courb. 1968DKnot in their usual nameDanish pornographic actress, mainstream actress, singer and fashion designer
- Katja Seizingerb. 1972DEGerman former alpine ski racer
- Katja Studtb. 1973DEGerman actress
- Katya Lychevab. 1974FRnot in their usual nameRussian actress
- Katja Frenzelb. 1974DEGerman actress
- Katja Schuurmanb. 1975NLDutch actress, singer and presenter (born 1975)
- Katja Kippingb. 1978DEGerman politician
- Katja Kettub. 1978FIFinnish writer and animation director (born 1978)
- Katja Herbersb. 1980NLDutch actress
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 65 sources across 33 countries.
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 · 558 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Katja?
- We estimate roughly 243 thousand people bear Katja (counting its spellings and scripts) across 14 countries in our records.
- In which country does Katja have the most bearers?
- Katja is most frequently recorded in Germany, where it is most often spelled katja.
- Where is Katja most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Katja is densest in Slovenia — about 1 in 244 people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
- How common is Katja compared with other names?
- In Germany, Katja is the 138th most common given name of 154,506 given names recorded there.
- Is Katja a male or female name?
- Katja 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 Katja mean?
- Recorded meaning: Katja (m.fl. former) är ursprungligen ryska smekformer till → Katarina.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/katjaThe 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
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, “Katja” — the 138th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.