Cătălin
Fewer than 120 men in Poland carry it, so most Poles have never met a Cătălin. The root is Latin, with the sense "pure".
Cătălin Pronunciation
Cătălin is pronounced TSĂTĂLEEN (/t͡sătălin/).
What Cătălin means
Where Cătălin comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Cătălin comes to Polish ears from Romania, where it is the masculine form of the name Poland knows as Katarzyna. Its Latin ancestor is Catharina, a reshaping of the Greek Aikaterine. The meaning most people now attach to it, pure, czysta, arrived long after the name did. Early spellings pointed elsewhere. The sense of purity was fastened on later, once writers tied the name to the Greek word katharos, meaning clean.
Romanian readers meet a Cătălin in Mihai Eminescu's poem "Luceafărul", published in 1883. There he is an earthly page, quick and warm, who courts the girl Cătălina while a star loves her from the sky. That Cătălin is no hero. He is ordinary, and the poem hands him the happy ending.
On a Polish class register the name would stand out among the Kacpers and Katarzynas. Its name day follows Saint Catherine, the twenty-fifth of November. The short meaning holds across the border: pure, czysta.
How many people are named Cătălin
1 in 184019 men in Poland is named Cătălin. 116 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3136 among male names.
Cătălin as a middle name
Cătălin is a first name for 116 men in Poland and a middle name for another 15, an 89/11 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 2382nd, between Boy (15) and Chase (15).
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#2380 Beno15
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#2381 Boy15
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#2382 Catalin15
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#2383 Chase15
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#2384 Cherif15