Katarina
A rarer spelling of Katarzyna, from the Greek for "pure". Only a few hundred women in Poland carry this form, so most people here have never met one.
Katarina Pronunciation
Katarina is pronounced kah-tah-REE-nah (/kataˈrina/).
What Katarina means
Where Katarina comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Katarina reaches Polish through Greek, a cousin of the fuller form Katarzyna and the everyday Kasia. Behind all three stands the old Greek name Aikaterine, carried by Saint Catherine of Alexandria, whose feast falls on the 25th of November.
The sense of "pure" came later. Scholars linked the name to Greek katharos, meaning clean or clear, and that reading of "pure, clean" settled onto it. In Polish the meaning becomes czysta, nieskazitelna. It is a gloss grafted onto the sound rather than a fact of its birth.
Kasia stays close to the ground. A Katarina who signs Katarzyna on a form at the urząd will answer to Kasia for the rest of the day, and the name has room for both. The saint left her mark on the calendar too. The eve of her feast gave Poland katarzynki, an old fortune-telling night for young men, the lads' answer to andrzejki.
So the line runs from a Greek root to a Polish variant to a household diminutive: Aikaterine, then Katarzyna, then Kasia.
How many people are named Katarina
1 in 67295 women in Poland is named Katarina. 335 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #1648 among female names.
Katarina's popularity over time
Fewer than 2 girls were given the name in 2025. It has been stable for a decade.
Katarina as a middle name
Katarina is a first name for 335 women in Poland and a middle name for another 95, a 78/22 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 685th, between Graciela (95) and Madeleine (95).
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#683 Emilie95
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#684 Graciela95
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#685 Katarina95
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#686 Madeleine95
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#687 Susanne95