Meaning not yet researched.
Cate: US girls given the name each year, 1880 to 2025, from Social Security card applications. 11 in 2025. Its best rank was #1,529 in 2008.
US births per year · SSA card applications
Peaked at #1,529 in 2008; #8,978 in 2025. Every baby recorded as Cate in 2025 was a girl.
Baby name · US data 1880–2025
#8,978 for US girls in 2025. Its best year was 2008, at #1,529.
Hover, tap or use the arrow keys for any year. Years with fewer than five babies of a sex are not published by SSA and show as zero.
Cate: US girls given the name each year from 1880 to 2025. 11 girls in 2025. Peak: #1,529 in 2008 · most girls in one year: 152 (2008).
In 2025, 11 US girls were named Cate, making it the 8,978th most common girls’ name of the year, down 3,932 places from #5,046 in 2024. That is 15 fewer than the 26 girls named Cate in 2024. Its best rank for girls was #1,529, reached in 2008. That year also had the most girls given the name: 152. For comparison, it was #2,938 in 2015 and unranked in 1950.
Social Security card records list Cate in 41 years of the 146 from 1880 to 2025, starting in 1980 with 5 babies. In all, 1,789 US babies have been given the name, all of them girls. Its busiest decade was the 2000s, with 932 babies named Cate.
Over the 10 years from 2016 to 2025, 274 US girls were named Cate; the busiest of those years was 2018, with 47. In 2025 that was about 1 in 146,115 of the girls in SSA’s list for the year.
Related spellings in the SSA files include Kate (86,076 babies since 1880). Rarer spellings such as Cait are summarised on this page.
Meaning not yet researched.
We publish a meaning only with a cited source and a confidence label, and never generate one. Meanings are being researched for the most common names first.
Rare spellings summarised here: Cait (153).
Numbers are all-time US births. Links come from Wikidata’s “said to be the same as” (P460, CC0) and our spelling rule: at most two letters different, with the same sound pattern.
No nicknames listed for Cate in the open dataset we use.
Source: carltonnorthern/nicknames (Apache-2.0).
Births and national rank for each year SSA lists the name, newest first.
| Year | Girls | Girls rank | Boys | Boys rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 11 | #8,978 | — | — |
| 2024 | 26 | #5,046 | — | — |
| 2023 | 17 | #6,726 | — | — |
| 2022 | 25 | #5,197 | — | — |
| 2021 | 23 | #5,429 | — | — |
| 2020 | 18 | #6,380 | — | — |
| 2019 | 30 | #4,563 | — | — |
| 2018 | 47 | #3,357 | — | — |
| 2017 | 39 | #3,860 | — | — |
| 2016 | 38 | #3,939 | — | — |
| 2015 | 59 | #2,938 | — | — |
| 2014 | 61 | #2,815 | — | — |
| 2013 | 61 | #2,813 | — | — |
| 2012 | 88 | #2,151 | — | — |
| 2011 | 95 | #2,045 | — | — |
| 2010 | 80 | #2,367 | — | — |
| 2009 | 115 | #1,851 | — | — |
| 2008 | 152 | #1,529 | — | — |
| 2007 | 118 | #1,808 | — | — |
| 2006 | 87 | #2,209 | — | — |
| 2005 | 118 | #1,681 | — | — |
| 2004 | 111 | #1,736 | — | — |
| 2003 | 82 | #2,128 | — | — |
| 2002 | 64 | #2,471 | — | — |
| 2001 | 41 | #3,324 | — | — |
| 2000 | 44 | #3,127 | — | — |
| 1999 | 38 | #3,327 | — | — |
| 1998 | 10 | #8,694 | — | — |
| 1996 | 5 | #13,882 | — | — |
| 1995 | 8 | #9,723 | — | — |
| 1994 | 6 | #12,036 | — | — |
| 1993 | 5 | #13,803 | — | — |
| 1992 | 10 | #8,177 | — | — |
| 1991 | 5 | #13,494 | — | — |
| 1989 | 5 | #12,693 | — | — |
| 1988 | 9 | #7,794 | — | — |
| 1987 | 9 | #7,459 | — | — |
| 1986 | 8 | #7,863 | — | — |
| 1985 | 8 | #7,663 | — | — |
| 1982 | 8 | #7,576 | — | — |
| 1980 | 5 | #10,604 | — | — |
About the data: counts are Social Security card applications for US births, for names given to at least five babies of a sex in a year (SSA, names.zip, public domain). Ranks follow SSA’s own order: most births first, ties alphabetical. Files retrieved 2026-10-05 (checksum on our sources page).