Kennan
given name · Latin script
Meaning: reduced form of McKennan (see Kenny)
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 16 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/cenan/(machine-generated) Spanish · model-generated
Kennan is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 288K(measured from records)
- GYGuyana1 in 375K
- CRCosta Rica1 in 510K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 229 (measured from records)
- 1 in 288K (inferred from the name graph)
1,157 people, 2020
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)reduced form of McKennan (see Kenny).
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where in the world
(measured from records)Kennan 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 | 1,157 | 1 in 288K | 1K | Kennan | 229 |
| PH Philippines | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 544K | — | Kennan | 23 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈66 est. | ≈1 in 1M | listed | Kennan | 72 |
| CA Canada | ≈49 est. | ≈1 in 844K | 2 | Kennan | 30 |
| BR Brazil | 43 | 1 in 4.9M | 43 | Kennan | 12 |
| CU Cuba | ≈22 est. | ≈1 in 495K | — | Kennan | 1 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈15 est. | ≈1 in 352K | — | Kennan | 5 |
| IE Ireland | ≈14 est. | ≈1 in 381K | — | Kennan | 41 |
| GY Guyana | 2 | 1 in 375K | 2 | — | 1 |
1,157 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Kennan Tayler Smithb. 1926USPh.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison 1951
- Kennan Adeangb. 1942NRNauruan politician (1942-2011)
- Ian K. BreckheimerUSnot in their usual nameAmerican ecologist
- Kennan Scottactor
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)34 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 478 | #42,677 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 476 | #47,959 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 475 | #45,105 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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
- How do you pronounce Kennan?
- In Spanish /cenan/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- What does the name Kennan mean, and where does it come from?
- reduced form of McKennan (see Kenny). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- Is Kennan a male or female name?
- Kennan is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: United States (Census Bureau, 2020).
- In which country does Kennan have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.2 thousand people named Kennan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kennan.
- Where is Kennan most common?
- Kennan is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 288 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Kennan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,157 people named Kennan in 2020, about 1 in 288 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kennan?
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/kennanThe 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, “Kennan”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.