Catharine

Where Catharine comes from

The dictionaries list Catharine as a given name — a female given name from Ancient Greek, of less common usage, variant of Catherine — but don't trace where it came from. The record below is what the SSA data shows.

  • Ancient Greek
  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1800
    Catharine Beecher born
    United States educator
  2. 1880
    First SSA year
    Already #294 among girls — 28 babies in the first year on record.
  3. 1883
    Peak, #249
    52 babies named Catharine — more than any year before or since.
  4. 1946
    Catharine MacKinnon born
    American feminist and legal activist
  5. 2009
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #7,066.
In the dictionary
  • A female given name from Ancient Greek, of less common usage, variant of Catherine.
Namesakes
  • Catharine MacKinnon · American feminist and legal activist, born 1946
  • Catharine Beecher · United States educator, 1800–1878
  • Catharine Macaulay · English historian, philosopher, feminist, 1731–1791
  • Catharine Trotter · English novelist, dramatist, philosopher, 1674–1749
  • Catharine Parr Traill · English-Canadian author and botanical artist, 1802–1899

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.