Kent
loc · Latin script
Meaning: ‘the man from Kent’; first attested Nicholas de Kent 1185
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Kent is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 4K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 4.2K
- USUnited States1 in 7.5K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 532 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈170,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ghana, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
‘the man from Kent’; first attested Nicholas de Kent 1185
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kent 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈170,000 est. | ≈1 in 8K | — | Kent | 47 |
| US United States | 44,325 | 1 in 7.5K | 54K | Kent | 532 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.2K | 4 | Kent | 266 |
| GH Ghana | ≈8,100 est. | ≈1 in 3.6K | — | Kent | 24 |
| AU Australia | ≈6,400 est. | ≈1 in 4K | 3 | Kent | 204 |
| CA Canada | ≈6,200 est. | ≈1 in 6K | 2 | Kent | 241 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈710 est. | ≈1 in 6.9K | 10 | Kent | 95 |
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: NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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)
Kent is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Celtic/English: bright white; also from the name Kenneth
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Transferred use of the surname, in origin a local name from the English county. This is probably named with a Celtic word meaning ‘border’. Use as a given name is of recent origin, but it is now quite popular. It may in part be seen as a short form of Kenton.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, which is of apparently Brit, origin, but uncertain etymol¬ ogy. It may mean ‘coastal district’, from the Celt, element canto (cf. W cant rim, border). Vars.: Kentish, Kintish
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, habitational name for someone from Kent, an ancient Celtic 294 name. The surname is also frequent in Scotland and Ireland. In Irrerwick in East Lothian, English vassals were settled in the middle of the 12th century and in Meath in Ireland in the 13th century.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A maritime county in southeast England bordered by East Sussex, Surrey, Greater London, the North Sea and the English Channel.
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)
- Kent Altermanb. 1901USfilm director
- Deke Slaytonb. 1924USnot in their usual nameAmerican astronaut (1924–1993)
- Kent L. Wakefordb. 1928USAmerican cinematographer
- Kent Conradb. 1948USAmerican politician (born 1948)
- Charlie Wilsonb. 1953USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer and musician (born 1953)
- T. K. Carterb. 1956USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor and comedian (1956-2026)
- Jeffrey Kent Eugenidesb. 1960USnovelist, short story writer, academic
- Rolfe Kentb. 1963GBBritish composer
- Jason Batemanb. 1969USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor (born 1969)
- Brad Stevensb. 1976USnot in their usual nameAmerican coach and executive
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 80 sources across 39 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 54K | #850 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 139 | #850 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 101 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 10 | — |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 1995 | 10 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1984 | 5 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 1979 | 4 | #259 |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2022 | 3 | #414 |
| AU Australia | Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM) | 1992 | 3 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 2 | #1,520 |
Reference works 9
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Kent mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘the man from Kent’; first attested Nicholas de Kent 1185 Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Kent have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 175 thousand people named Kent in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kent.
- How common is the name Kent?
- In the United States, the national register counted 44,325 people named Kent in 2010, about 1 in 7.5 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kent?
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/kentThe 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, “Kent”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.