How popular is the baby name Katinka in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Katinka.

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Popularity of the baby name Katinka


Posts that mention the name Katinka

Which “Seven Sisters” name do you like best?

Scene from the movie "The Seven Sisters" (1915)
Scene from “The Seven Sisters“

Katinka, Sari, Ella, Mici, Terka, Liza and Klara were the names of the seven sisters in the lost silent film The Seven Sisters (1915), which was based on a Hungarian play.

A 1916 advertisement for the movie, which was a vehicle for silent film actress Marguerite Clark, offered the following summary:

The story is as simple and as sweet and dainty as Little Marguerite herself. She is the fourth of a family of seven sisters. Under an old Hungarian marriage law she must not marry until the elder sisters have gone off. How she and her lover clear the way with the aid of that young man’s marriageable friends affords scope for some delightful comedy amid the quaintest and most beautiful old-world surroundings ever portrayed.

The names Katinka, Sari, Ella, Mici, Terka, Liza and Klara are Hungarian versions (or diminutives of Hungarian versions) of the names Katherine, Sarah, Eleanor (or some other El- or -ella name), Mitzi, Theresa, Elizabeth and Clara.

And now for today’s question…which Hungarian girl name do you like best? Why?

  • Katinka
  • Sari
  • Ella
  • Mici
  • Terka
  • Liza
  • Klara

Sources:

  • Bacon, George Vaux. “Seven Sisters.” Photoplay Magazine Sept. 1915: 112-120.
  • “Advertisements.” New Zealand Herald 21 Aug. 1916: 12.

Fighting for a Romansh name in Switzerland

We’ve talked about parents fighting to use Berber baby names in Morocco, and parents fighting to use Breton baby names in France.

Now let’s talk about a Romansh family that made headlines for fighting to register a Romansh baby name in Switzerland.

But first, some background.

Switzerland has four national languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh. Romansh is spoken in mountainous eastern Switzerland and is “the direct descendant of the Latin that was spoken in these mountain valleys at the height of the Roman empire, and shares the same Latin roots as French, Italian or Spanish.” It was the last of the four languages to be officially recognized, in 1938.

Right around the time Romansh became an official language, a Romansh carpenter by the name of John Truoz-Saluz — who’d moved westward with his family to the German-speaking city of Solothurn — welcomed a baby girl.

The baby was named Tina.

John tried to register Tina’s name with the government, but the name was rejected.

The clerk at the Solothurn registry office couldn’t find Tina in the German-language Duden, and, according to Solothurn cantonal law, “nobody could legally bear a given name which was not listed in the Duden.” So the name couldn’t be accepted. (The clerk then suggested Tinka, a diminutive of Katinka, as an alternative to Tina.)

John appealed to the municipal council, to the cantonal supreme court, and ultimately to the Swiss supreme court in Bern.

It took a year and a half of battling the government, but finally, in 1940, the federal court overruled the lower courts by deciding that “an original citizen of one canton had the right to name his children, despite the laws of his adopted canton.”

Sources: