Kénan

given name · Latin script

A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 3 countries

Kénan is a male 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
  • SISlovenia1 in 4K(measured from records)
  • SESweden1 in 9.5K
  • DKDenmark1 in 14K

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

Record sources
200 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: 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)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Kenan in US United States, AD Andorra.

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

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

Cited for this meaning 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 23 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

(measured from records)

Kénan 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 Kénan is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—3,9491 in 84K3.8KKenan46
SE Sweden—1,0731 in 9.5K1.1K—5
SI Slovenia—5271 in 4K546—1
DK Denmark—4171 in 14K417——
ES Spain—2351 in 213K235—2
NO Norway—2321 in 24K870—2
GY Guyana—231 in 33K23——
AD Andorra#626———Kenan3

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).

Other names spelled this way

(inferred from the name graph)

Kénan is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, United States, Argentina, Philippines

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Kenan, Kenán, Kêňäň, Kȅnȃn, Kënán

  • English given name27 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Germany, Türkiye, Austria

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Kenan, Cianan, Cianán, K'Enan, K͎e͎n͎a͎n͎

  • Turkish given name56 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, Syria, Kyrgyzstan, United States

    Languages: Turkish, Arabic, Uzbek

    Also written Kenan, Кэнан, Qenan, K'Enan, เค่อน่าน

1 further group record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Evidence

(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

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

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Kénan 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 Kénan a male or female name?
Kénan is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: France (INSEE, 2024).
In which country does Kénan have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 3.9 thousand people named Kénan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kenan.
Where is Kénan most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kénan 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 Kénan?
In the United States, the national register counted 3,949 people named Kénan in 2020, about 1 in 84 thousand residents.
How common is Kénan compared with other names?
In Andorra, Kénan is the 626th most common given name of 891 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Kénan?

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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%A9nan

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, “Kénan” — the 626th most common given name in Andorra. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Kénan parses inside a full name →