Kenan
given name · Latin script
Meaning: A biblical name of Hebrew origin meaning 'possession' or 'acquisition'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/cen̪an̪/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kenan is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Türkiye than in any other country. In Bosnia & Herzegovina it is the 76th most common given name.
- AZAzerbaijan≈1 in 579(inferred from the name graph)
- TRTürkiye≈1 in 846
- SYSyria≈1 in 3.7K
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.
- Türkiye (inferred from the name graph)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 200 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 390 (inferred from the name graph)
≈97,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Bosnia & Herzegovina, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Qenan in XK Kosovo.
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)
A biblical name of Hebrew origin meaning 'possession' or 'acquisition'.
Sources 1
- Biblical Names Compiled Database
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kenan 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TR Türkiye | #156 | ≈97,000 est. | ≈1 in 846 | — | Kenan | 135 |
| AZ Azerbaijan | #237 | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 579 | — | Kenan | 37 |
| BA Bosnia & Herzegovina | #76 | ≈9,800 est. | ≈1 in 390 | 53 | Kenan | 33 |
| SY Syria | #625 | ≈5,200 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | — | Kenan | 27 |
| US United States | — | 3,949 | 1 in 84K | 3.8K | Kenan | 200 |
| XK Kosovo | #429 | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | 953 | Qenan | 3 |
| CY Cyprus | #335 | ≈410 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | — | Kenan | 18 |
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; ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search); the ba-fzs-newborn-names register. 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)
Kenan 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.
Derived from a Hebrew root meaning 'possession', 'smith', or 'lament'.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
As a member of the Sethite genealogy, Kenan represents the preservation of the righteous lineage from Adam to Noah.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
In French, From Hebrew Qenan/Cainan, possibly 'possession' or 'smith'.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In Turkish, Canaan
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Turkish, 1. Vaat edilmiş ülke.2. Cennet.3. Hazreti Yakup'un ülkesi, Filistin.
as a wordTDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)
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)
- Kenan Evrenb. 1917TRPresident of Turkey (1917–2015)
- Kenan Balb. 1950TRTurkish actor (born 1950)
- Andrew Roseb. 1959USnot in their usual nameCanadian economist
- Kenan Doğulub. 1974TRTurkish singer (born 1974)
- Kenan İmirzalıoğlub. 1974TRTurkish actor and fashion model (born 1974)
- Kenan Thompsonb. 1978USAmerican comedian and actor (born 1978)
- Kenan Koçakb. 1981TRTurkish-German association football player and manager (born 1981)
- Kenan Kodrob. 1993ESBosnian-Spanish association football player
- Kenan Karamanb. 1994DETurkish association football player (born 1994)
- Kenan Yıldızb. 2005TRTurkish association football player (born 2005)
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 89 sources across 48 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 3.8K | #4,639 |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | — | 953 | #738 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 184 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 151 | #4,639 |
| BA Bosnia & Herzegovina | FZS — 100 najčešćih imena (Top-100 Newborn Names, Federation of BiH) | 2025 | 53 | #47 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2010 | 5 | — |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | 2025 | 4 | — |
Reference works 7
- 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
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Тахиров, Речник на турските лични имена в България
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
- How do you pronounce Kenan?
- A machine transcription gives /cen̪an̪/ (IPA) for Turkish.
- What does the name Kenan mean, and where does it come from?
- A biblical name of Hebrew origin meaning 'possession' or 'acquisition'. Recorded by Biblical Names Compiled Database.
- Is Kenan a male or female name?
- Kenan 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 Kenan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 97 thousand people named Kenan in Türkiye, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kenan.
- What are other forms of the name Kenan?
- In the etymology graph, Kainan, Cainan and Qenan are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Kenan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,949 people named Kenan in 2020, about 1 in 84 thousand residents.
- How common is Kenan compared with other names?
- In Türkiye, Kenan is the 156th most common given name of 264,080 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kenan?
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/kenanThe 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, “Kenan” — the 156th most common given name in Türkiye. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.