Kenji
given name · Latin script
Meaning: ‘Intelligent ruler’ (A concise dictionary of first names)
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 34 countries · latest register: SSA, 2025
/kẽʒi/(machine-generated) Portuguese · model-generated
Kenji is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Japan than in any other country, where it is the 15th most common given name. Kenji is also written 켄지 in Korean (Hangul).
- JPJapan≈1 in 520(inferred from the name graph)
- MQMartinique≈1 in 2.1K
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 8.2Kfew records
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 Kenji itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Japan (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 278 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 519 (inferred from the name graph)
≈240,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Japan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Kenji in other scripts: Korean (Hangul)
(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.
How to pronounce Kenji
- Portuguese:/kẽʒi/(machine-generated) model-generated
Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)‘Intelligent ruler’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Kenji, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Kenji 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JP Japan | #15 | ≈240,000 est. | ≈1 in 519 | listed | Kenji | 195 |
| US United States | — | 18,539as Kenzie | 1 in 18K | 18K | Kenji | 278 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 92K | — | Kenji | 42 |
| HK Hong Kong | #587 | ≈910 est. | ≈1 in 8.2K | — | Kenji | 22 |
| FR France | — | ≈810 est. | ≈1 in 85K | 1.7K | — | 2 |
| BR Brazil | — | 791 | 1 in 268K | 791 | — | 1 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 780 | 1 in 22K | 770 | Kenji | 23 |
| MQ Martinique | — | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | 5 | — | — |
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: the japanese-names-oneill-1972 register; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 972 (Martinique). 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)Kenji 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.
In men, The seed of the Nduvu. Like a fir cone closed, 4x1 inches. They say the toucan swallows
as a wordMende Natural History Vocabulary
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)- Miyazawa Kenjib. 1896JPJapanese poet and author of children's literature (1896-1933)
- Kenji Mizoguchib. 1898JPJapanese film director and screenwriter (1898-1956)
- Mike Shinodab. 1977USnot in their usual nameAmerican musician, rapper, singer and songwriter
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)57 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 34 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Kenji a male or female name?
- Kenji is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: United States (Census Bureau, 2020), France (INSEE, 2023), Brazil (IBGE, 2022) and Netherlands (Meertens NVB).
- What does the name Kenji mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘Intelligent ruler’. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- Which countries have the most people named Kenji?
- Mondonomo estimates about 239 thousand people named Kenji in Japan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kenji. After it come United States, Philippines, Hong Kong and France; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How do you pronounce Kenji?
- In Portuguese /kẽʒi/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- How common is the name Kenji?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 791 people named Kenji in 2022, about 1 in 268 thousand residents.
- How common is Kenji compared with other names?
- In Japan, Kenji is the 15th most common given name of 366,905 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kenji?
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/kenjiThe 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, “Kenji” — the 15th most common given name in Japan. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.