Katharina
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from Greek Aikaterinē; later associated with katharos 'pure'
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kataˈʁiːna/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Katharina is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country. In Croatia it is the 16th most common given name.
- ATAustria≈1 in 437(inferred from the name graph)
- DEGermany≈1 in 510
- DKDenmark1 in 6.3K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Katharina itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Netherlands (measured from records)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 334 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 437 (inferred from the name graph)
242,061 named Catharina
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Katarina in HR Croatia, SE Sweden, RS Serbia, Catharina in NL Netherlands, Catarina in BR Brazil and Katariina in FI Finland.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Greek Aikaterinē; later associated with katharos 'pure'
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Katharina counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | #338 | 242,061as Catharina | 1 in 71 | 231K | Catharina | 89 |
| DE Germany | #79 | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 510 | listed | Katharina | 271 |
| BR Brazil | — | 71,392as Catarina | 1 in 3K | 71K | Catarina | 156 |
| SE Sweden | #52 | 48,882as Katarina | 1 in 209 | 49K | Katarina | 148 |
| FI Finland | #891 | 48,244as Katariina | 1 in 115 | 59K | Katariina | 89 |
| RS Serbia | #40 | ≈34,000 est. | ≈1 in 208 | listed | Katarina | 79 |
| HR Croatia | #16 | 28,618as Katarina | 1 in 148 | 29K | Katarina | 129 |
| AT Austria | #56 | ≈20,000 est. | ≈1 in 437 | 27K | Katharina | 154 |
| DK Denmark | #455 | 930 | 1 in 6.3K | 930 | Katharina | 91 |
242,061 people counted by Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Katharina is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, from Greek Aikaterinē, often linked with 'pure'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In German, from Greek Aikaterine; source of stock forms like Trine
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
From Greek. See }Katherine in main dictionary.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In German, a female given name, equivalent to English Catherine
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, Metronymischer Familienname zu Rufname Katharina; 22 Träger, in ganz Deutschland verstreut.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Catherine of Bohemiab. 1342CZnot in their usual nameCzech princess (1342 –1395)
- Katharina von Borab. 1499DEwife of Martin Luther (1499-1552)
- Catalina Micaela of Spainb. 1567ESnot in their usual nameAustrian archduchess (1567-1597)
- Catherine II of Russiab. 1729RUnot in their usual nameeighth Emperor of Russia, called the Great, r. 1762–1796 (lived 1729-1796)
- Catharina of Württembergb. 1783RUnot in their usual nameQueen consort of Westphalia
- Marlene Schmidtb. 1937DEnot in their usual nameGerman actress
- Rosi Mittermaierb. 1950DEnot in their usual nameGerman alpine skier (1950–2023)
- Katharina Thalbachb. 1954DEGerman actress
- Katharina Schüttlerb. 1979DEGerman actress
- Sabine Lisickib. 1989DEnot in their usual nameGerman tennis player
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 76 sources across 39 countries.
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Katharina mean, and where does it come from?
- from Greek Aikaterinē; later associated with katharos 'pure' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- In which country does Katharina have the most bearers?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 242 thousand people named Catharina, more than in any other country we hold.
- How do you pronounce Katharina?
- A machine transcription gives /kataˈʁiːna/ (IPA) for German.
- What are other forms of the name Katharina?
- In the etymology graph, Kathleen, Catherine and Katherine are forms of the same name in other languages; Karen, Karina and Karin are recorded short or pet forms.
- Is Katharina a male or female name?
- Katharina 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.
- How common is the name Katharina?
- In Denmark, the national register counted 930 people named Katharina, about 1 in 6.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Katharina compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Katharina is the 338th most common given name of 101,916 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Katharina?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/katharinaThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
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, “Katharina” — the 338th most common given name in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.