Ken
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from AF/OF ken, chen, OF chien, Lat canis ‘dog’; first attested Robert le Chien (Chen) 1183
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kɛn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ken is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Hong Kong it is the 44th most common given name.
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 317(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 866
- SGSingapore≈1 in 1.4K
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)
- #898 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 591 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 317 (inferred from the name graph)
≈520,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Hong Kong, 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)
from AF/OF ken, chen, OF chien, Lat canis ‘dog’; first attested Robert le Chien (Chen) 1183
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ken 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 | — | ≈520,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | — | Ken | 89 |
| US United States | #366 | 69,582 | 1 in 4.8K | 69K | Ken | 591 |
| CA Canada | #146 | ≈44,000 est. | ≈1 in 866 | 4 | Ken | 285 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.4K | — | Ken | 86 |
| KE Kenya | #435 | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | — | Ken | 60 |
| HK Hong Kong | #44 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 317 | — | Ken | 92 |
| AU Australia | #320 | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | 1 | Ken | 253 |
| TW Taiwan | #819 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Ken | 118 |
| SG Singapore | #172 | ≈4,500 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Ken | 130 |
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; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–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)
Ken 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.
from Anglo-French ken, chen ‘dog’ (Old French chien), possibly applied as a nickname or as a metonymic name for someone who kept hunting dogs.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Short form of Kenneth, or occasionally of various other boys’ names with this first syllable. Kenda @° Modern name, apparently a shortened KENELM form of Kendall. It has perhaps been created by analogy with the pair of names Linda and pLindall.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
habitational name for someone from either of two places named Kenn, in Devon and Avon, both of which take their name from the streams on which they stand.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Perhaps also a respelhng of German Kenn, either from a short form of the personal name Konrad or a habitational name ft'om Kenn, near Trier.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, To give birth, conceive, beget, be born; to develop (as a fetus); to nourish, sustain (as life).
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)
- Ken Rosewallb. 1934AUAustralian tennis player
- Ken Keseyb. 1935USAmerican novelist (1935–2001)
- Ken Mattinglyb. 1936USAmerican astronaut
- Ken Howardb. 1944USAmerican actor (1944–2016)
- Ken Livingstoneb. 1945GBEnglish politician (born 1945); Mayor of London from 2000 until 2008
- Ken Shimurab. 1950JPJapanese comedian (1950-2020)
- Ken Pageb. 1954USAmerican actor (1954–2024)
- Ken Kirzingerb. 1959CACanadian actor and stuntman
- Ken Leungb. 1970USAmerican actor
- Ken Andersonb. 1976USAmerican professional wrestler and actor
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 100 sources across 54 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 69K | #733 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 509 | #733 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 36 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 13 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1990 | 5 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 4 | #922 |
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
- 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
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
- Is Ken a male or female name?
- Ken 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.
- What are other forms of the name Ken?
- In the etymology graph, Kenny is a form of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Kenneth and Kennith.
- What does the name Ken mean, and where does it come from?
- from AF/OF ken, chen, OF chien, Lat canis ‘dog’; first attested Robert le Chien (Chen) 1183 Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Ken have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 521 thousand people named Ken in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ken.
- How do you pronounce Ken?
- A machine transcription gives /kɛn/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Ken?
- In the United States, the national register counted 69,582 people named Ken in 2020, about 1 in 4.8 thousand residents.
- How common is Ken compared with other names?
- In Hong Kong, Ken is the 44th most common given name of 23,276 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ken?
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/kenThe 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, “Ken” — the 44th most common given name in Hong Kong. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.