Kennard
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from the medieval personal name Keneward, from Old English Cyneweard, either ‘royal-brave’ or ‘royal guard’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈkɛnɝd/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kennard is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- GBUnited Kingdom
- AUAustralia
- USUnited States
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from the medieval personal name Keneward, from Old English Cyneweard, either ‘royal-brave’ or ‘royal guard’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Kennard 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.
In English, OE Cyneweard, composed of the elements cyne- royal + heard hardy, brave, strong or weard guard. which is of apparently Brit, origin, but uncertain ety¬ mology. It may mean ‘coastal district’, from the Celt, element canto (cf. W cartt rim, border). Vars.: Kentish, Kintish. Vars. (from the second possibility): Kenward, Kenwood.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
Transferred use of a surname, derived from a Middle English personal name in which several earlier names have fallen together. The first element is either céne ‘keen’ or cyne ‘royal’; the second is either weard ‘guardian’ or heard ‘hardy’, ‘brave’, ‘strong’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, from the Old English personal name Cenweard ‘bold guardian’ or Cyneweard ‘royal guardian’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Old English: bold, hardy
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
English: ultimately from an Old English personal name in which several earlier names have fallen together. The first element is either c ne keen, bold, or cyne royal; the second is either weard guard or heard brave, hardy. This name seems to have died out during the Middle Ages, and in modern times Kennard probably represents a transferred use of the surname derived from it.
as a word
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)
- Howard William Kennardb. 1878GBBritish diplomat (1878–1955)
- Georgina Kennardb. 1919GBBritish noble (1919-2011)
- Olga Kennardb. 1924GBBritish crystallographer (1924-2023)
- Don Kennardb. 1929USAmerican politician (1929-2011)
- Joyce L. Kennardb. 1941USAmerican judge
- Gaby Kennardb. 1944AUAustralian aviator
- William Kennardb. 1957USformer United States Ambassador to the European Union and former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission
- Malcolm Kennardb. 1967AUactor
- Matt Kennardb. 1982GBEnglish actor
- Luke Kennardb. 1996USAmerican basketball player (born 1996)
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 35 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 5.6K | #6,126 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 4.7K | #6,674 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 4.6K | #7,085 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 28 | — |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 21 | #83,140 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 21 | #80,648 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 10 | #40,182 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 4 | — |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 4 | #118,617 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 4 | #224,808 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 2 | #196,485 |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
- What does the name Kennard mean, and where does it come from?
- from the medieval personal name Keneward, from Old English Cyneweard, either ‘royal-brave’ or ‘royal guard’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Kennard have the most bearers?
- Kennard is most frequently recorded in the United States.
- How do you pronounce Kennard?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɛnɝd/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Kennard?
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/kennardThe 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, “Kennard”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.