Kender
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from kender ‘hemp’, from Old Turkish kdndir, hence a metonymic occupational name for someone who grew hemp or used it to make ropes and sacks, or a topographic name for someone who lived near a field
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkɛndɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kender is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 665K(measured from records)
- EEEstonia≈1 in 23K
- SGSingapore≈1 in 148K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 151 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 23K (inferred from the name graph)
500 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Estonia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from kender ‘hemp’, from Old Turkish kdndir, hence a metonymic occupational name for someone who grew hemp or used it to make ropes and sacks, or a topographic name for someone who lived near a field of hemp.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kender 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 500 | 1 in 665K | 544 | Kender | 151 |
| GH Ghana | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 222K | — | Kender | 3 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 614K | — | Kender | 22 |
| NL Netherlands | ≈79 est. | ≈1 in 219K | — | Kender | 4 |
| EE Estonia | ≈53 est. | ≈1 in 23K | 20 | Kender | 10 |
| SG Singapore | ≈42 est. | ≈1 in 148K | — | Kender | 1 |
| FI Finland | 22 | 1 in 253K | 22 | — | — |
500 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Kender is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Danish, connoisseur
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Hungarian, hemp
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Kaur Kenderb. 1971EEEstonian author and entrepreneur (born 1971)
- Sev KenderGBresearcher
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 24 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 128 | #41,825 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 46 | #41,825 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 20 | #1,506 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2024 | 12 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2023 | 12 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 10 | #43,248 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 10 | #42,659 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2022 | 7 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2021 | 6 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2008 | 6 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2020 | 5 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2017 | 5 | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kender mean, and where does it come from?
- from kender ‘hemp’, from Old Turkish kdndir, hence a metonymic occupational name for someone who grew hemp or used it to make ropes and sacks, or a topographic name for someone who lived near a field… Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kender?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɛndɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kender have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 500 people named Kender, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kender.
- How common is the name Kender?
- In the United States, the national register counted 500 people named Kender in 2010, about 1 in 665 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kender?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kenderThe 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, “Kender”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.