The first time I heard that name, I immediately fell in love with it and knew that, wife willing, my first daughter would be so called. It is unique without being crazy, and has deep traditional ties to it. My wife agreed to the name, and so our first born child, my first daughter was named Kateri.
Kateri Tekakwitha was the child of a Mohawk chief who captured his Algonquin bride in a raid. Kateri's mom had a deep spiritual life and was a Catholic. Her father kept the old ways, but both of them died when she was a young child by a small pox epidemic that ruined many in her town. She survived, but with scars all over her face and greatly diminished eye sight.
Though rejection of the Catholic French Jesuit missionaries was common by the rightfully suspicious Mohawks, Kateri was able to seek out the Jesuit instruction and become a Catholic herself. She was one of those rare people who so give themselves over to the Lord that they never stop growing and progressing in the spiritual life.