Kènan

given name · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Kènan is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Inherited from Ottoman Turkish كنعان (Kenʿân), from Arabic كَنْعَان (kanʕān).

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 84K(measured from records)
  • SISlovenia1 in 4K
  • SESweden1 in 9.5K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

3,949 people, 2020

Sources
285 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 4.0K (inferred from the name graph)

Slovenia

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Kenan in US United States, SE Sweden, BA Bosnia & Herzegovina.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Derivation of Kènan: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Kènan
  1. Ottoman TurkishكنعانKenʿân(measured from records)
  2. Arabicكَنْعَانkanʕān(measured from records)

Inherited from Ottoman Turkish كنعان (Kenʿân), from Arabic كَنْعَان (kanʕān).

Sources 8

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • TDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)
  • Wiktionary
  • Biblical Names Compiled Database

Attested across 26 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Kènan counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Kènan is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—3,9491 in 84K3.8KKenan285
SE Sweden—1,0731 in 9.5K1.1KKenan20
SI Slovenia—5271 in 4K546—7
DK Denmark—4171 in 14K417—1
ES Spain—2351 in 213K235—9
NO Norway—2321 in 24K870—11
GY Guyana—231 in 33K23—1
BA Bosnia & Herzegovina#338———Kenan21

3,949 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); SURS — resident population given names; stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Evidence(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Kènan under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Kènan mean, and where does it come from?
Inherited from Ottoman Turkish كنعان (Kenʿân), from Arabic كَنْعَان (kanʕān). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and 6 other sources.
Is Kènan a male or female name?
Kènan is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
In which country does Kènan have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 3.9 thousand people named Kènan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kenan.
Where is Kènan most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kènan is densest in Slovenia — about 1 in 4.0 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Kènan?
In the United States, the national register counted 3,949 people named Kènan in 2020, about 1 in 84 thousand residents.
How common is Kènan compared with other names?
In Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kènan is the 338th most common given name of 4,559 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Kènan?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/k%C3%A8nan

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Kènan” — the 338th most common given name in Bosnia & Herzegovina. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Kènan parses inside a full name →