Kathleen
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Kathleen is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Antigua & Barbuda it is the most common given name. Recorded meaning: Form of Katherine closely identified with Ireland; from Spanish Catalina, Old French Cateline, and Middle English Catlin.
- AGAntigua & Barbuda≈1 in 205(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 339
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 415
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #163 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 606 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 205 (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,300,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Antigua & Barbuda, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Cathleen in ID Indonesia.
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)
Form of Katherine closely identified with Ireland; from Spanish Catalina, Old French Cateline, and Middle English Catlin.
Sources 1
- Irish first names
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kathleen 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈3,300,000 est. | ≈1 in 427 | — | Kathleen | 41 |
| US United States | #65 | 547,321 | 1 in 608 | 547K | Kathleen | 606 |
| GB United Kingdom | #78 | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 415 | 4 | Kathleen | 293 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Cathleen | 50 |
| EG Egypt | #457 | ≈95,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Kathleen | 24 |
| IE Ireland | #43 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 339 | 23 | Kathleen | 120 |
| NZ New Zealand | #83 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 467 | 11 | Kathleen | 127 |
| AG Antigua & Barbuda | #1 | ≈480 est. | ≈1 in 205 | 3 | Kathleen | 4 |
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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); the ag-abec-voter-roll-2026 register. 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)
Kathleen 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 Swedish, Se Katarina.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In English, Irish Gaelic; a battle ruler
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Irish and English: Anglicized form of Gaelic CAITLÍN . Variant: Cathleen .
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Audrey Hepburnb. 1929GBnot in their usual nameBritish actress (1929–1993)
- Nina Simoneb. 1933USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer, songwriter and pianist and civil rights activist (1933–2003)
- Kathy Batesb. 1948USnot in their usual nameAmerican film actress and director
- Kathleen Turnerb. 1954USAmerican actress (born 1954)
- Kathleen Quinlanb. 1954USAmerican actress
- Joanne K. Rowlingb. 1965GBnot in their usual nameEnglish author (born 1965)
- Ellen Pompeob. 1969USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (born 1969)
- Kathleen Robertsonb. 1973CACanadian actress
- Abigail Breslinb. 1996USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress
- Katie Ledeckyb. 1997USnot in their usual nameAmerican Olympic swimmer
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(measured from records)
Attested in 84 sources across 50 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 547K | #77 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 278 | #77 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 201 | — |
| IE Ireland | CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present) | 2017 | 23 | #219 |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 2013 | 11 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1991 | 5 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2025 | 4 | #334 |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2019 | 4 | #650 |
| AG Antigua & Barbuda | Antigua & Barbuda ABEC Voter Registration Roll (2026) | 2026 | 3 | — |
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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kathleen mean, and where does it come from?
- Form of Katherine closely identified with Ireland; from Spanish Catalina, Old French Cateline, and Middle English Catlin. Recorded by Irish first names.
- Is Kathleen a male or female name?
- Kathleen 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 are other forms of the name Kathleen?
- In the etymology graph, Catherine, Katherine and Kathryn are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Kathleen have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.3 million people named Kathleen in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kathleen.
- How common is the name Kathleen?
- In the United States, the national register counted 547,321 people named Kathleen in 2020, about 1 in 608 residents.
- How common is Kathleen compared with other names?
- In Antigua & Barbuda, Kathleen is the most common given name of 3,327 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kathleen?
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/kathleenThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Kathleen” — the most common given name in Antigua & Barbuda. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.