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Agreed. I also recently found out that in medieval England, Katherine was pronounced Katerin, without the 'th' sound (this fits in with the French pronunciation too). Soon after, I visited the grave of Katherine Parr, King Henry VIII's sixth and final wife who survived him, and the tomb was engraved "HERE LIETH QUENE KATERYN". Perhaps that's where the Welsh form Catrin came from, too.

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Kathleen, as an English name, is relatively recently imported from Ireland (19th century?). The 'tl' sound in the Old French Cateline must have changed in an Irish accent to create the "Coshleen" type pronunciations found in Ireland. And then these pronunciations were then approximated into the anglicized version Kathleen.

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I wonder if somebody knows why so many French names in particular made it into medieval Ireland? Apart from Cateline/Caitlin, I can think of Jeanne/Siobhan, Jean/Sean... I'm sure there are more but I can't remember. I know that anything with a 'j' or 'zh' sound got turned into a 'sh' sound.

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I suppose Caitlin/Katelyn is a new step in the proliferation of Katherine variants. Caitlin has now given birth to two English variants, Kathleen (an approximated pronunciation), and Katelyn etc (a spelling pronunciation - albeit a very pretty one).