Keener
surname · Latin script
Meaning: comparative form of keen: more keen
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkinɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Keener is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 24K(measured from records)
- PLPoland1 in 407Kas Kiner
- UAUkraine≈1 in 1.4Mas Кінер
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Keener itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 49 (measured from records)
- 1 in 24K (inferred from the name graph)
13,687 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Кинер in RU Russia and Кінер in UA Ukraine.
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)
comparative form of keen: more keen
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Keener 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 | 13,687 | 1 in 24K | 14K | Keener | 15 |
| PL Poland | 94as Kiner | 1 in 407K | 49 | Keener | 3 |
| RU Russia | ≈44 est. | ≈1 in 3.2M | — | Кинер | 49 |
| BR Brazil | 37as Kiner | 1 in 5.7M | 37 | — | — |
| UA Ukraine | ≈31 est. | ≈1 in 1.4M | — | Кінер | 9 |
| CZ Czechia | 6as Kiner | 1 in 1.8M | 6 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 3as Kiner | 1 in 2.8M | 3 | — | — |
13,687 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; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); MVČR — living population register 2017; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)
Keener is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Americanized spelling of Kiener or Kuhner (see Kuehner).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- John Christian Keenerb. 1819USAmerican chaplain (1819-1906)
- William A. Keenerb. 1856USAmerican judge (1856–1913)
- Stephen Keenerb. 1940USVoice Actor
- James Keenerb. 1946USAmerican mathematician
- Catherine Keenerb. 1959USAmerican actress
- Dean Keenerb. 1965USAmerican basketball player-coach
- Elizabeth Keenerb. 1966USAmerican actress
- Jonna Mazetb. 1967USnot in their usual nameAmerican epidemiologist
- Emily Keenerb. 1999USAmerican musician
- Robert W. KeenerUSAmerican mathematician
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 12 sources across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 14K | #2,633 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 13K | #2,545 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 13K | #2,756 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 3 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 3 | #268,271 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Keener mean, and where does it come from?
- comparative form of keen: more keen Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Keener?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkinɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- What are other forms of the name Keener?
- In the etymology graph, Keen is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Keener have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 14 thousand people named Keener, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled keener.
- Where is Keener most common?
- Keener is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 24 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Keener?
- In the United States, the national register counted 13,687 people named Keener in 2010, about 1 in 24 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Keener?
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/keenerThe 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, “Keener”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.