← Back to The Name Registry
Girl

Cathleen

As a girl's name, Cathleen traces back to Irish, where it is understood to mean "Irish form of Katherine, pure". It had its heyday in the 1950s and has mostly fallen out of use since. Today, it is comfortably in the mainstream in the registry. Since 1900, roughly 29,831 babies in the U.S. have been given this name.

EtymologyVariant of Kathleen
IrishIrish form of Katherine – "pure"
Births by decade
1900s
124
1910s
345
1920s
641
1930s
599
1940s
3,541
1950s
9,469
1960s
8,294
1970s
3,461
1980s
1,760
1990s
956
2000s
461
2010s
180
Peaked in the 1950s · 29,831 total U.S. births since 1900