Kathy
Fewer than 80 women in Poland carry it, and the records show no newborn girls given it since 2000: meeting one would stick in memory. Greek at root, with the sense "pure".
Kathy Pronunciation
What Kathy means
Where Kathy comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Kathy is a short form of the English name Katherine. The longer name reaches back to Greek, to Aikaterine, the name of Catherine of Alexandria, a martyr venerated since at least the fourth century. The sense of "pure" came later. Scholars and pious readers linked the name to the Greek word katharos, meaning clean or pure, and that reading stuck to it for centuries.
Kathy grew up on English ground. It moved from a nickname into a full given name, common on record for women born across the English-speaking world in the twentieth century. Plenty of people know the short form without ever meeting the Greek root behind it.
The meaning travels light. A girl called Kathy in a Polish school register carries a name that is English in feel and Greek in origin, glossed in Polish as czysta. Few would guess the martyr of Alexandria stands behind it. The word underneath, all the same, is katharos, pure.
How many people are named Kathy
1 in 292777 women in Poland is named Kathy. 77 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #4063 among female names.
Kathy as a middle name
Kathy is a first name for 77 women in Poland and a middle name for another 33, a 70/30 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 1217th, between Hong (33) and Marcella (33).
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#1215 Ha33
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#1216 Hong33
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#1217 Kathy33
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#1218 Marcella33
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#1219 Martika33