Kenny
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from Gaelic Cionaodha, a personal name of unknown origin; also from Irish Gaelic Ó Coinnigh, descendant of Coinneach, literally “handsome”
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kɛni/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kenny is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- SGSingapore≈1 in 2.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- BEBelgium≈1 in 2.4K
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 3.6K
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)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 541 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 979 (inferred from the name graph)
≈270,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Hong Kong, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Kenney in SE Sweden, CN China.
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)
- GaelicCionaodha(measured from records)
- Irish GaelicÓ(measured from records)
from Gaelic Cionaodha, a personal name of unknown origin; also from Irish Gaelic Ó Coinnigh, descendant of Coinneach, literally “handsome”
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Kenny, 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)
Kenny 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 | — | ≈270,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.2K | — | Kenney | 53 |
| US United States | #696 | 51,666 | 1 in 6.4K | 51K | Kenny | 541 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈36,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.9K | — | Kenny | 95 |
| GB United Kingdom | #669 | ≈9,700 est. | ≈1 in 6.8K | — | Kenny | 266 |
| MY Malaysia | #709 | ≈9,100 est. | ≈1 in 3.6K | — | Kenny | 115 |
| HK Hong Kong | #465 | ≈7,400 est. | ≈1 in 979 | — | Kenny | 78 |
| BE Belgium | #714 | ≈4,800 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | 43 | Kenny | 117 |
| SE Sweden | — | 3,118 | 1 in 3.3K | 3.1K | Kenney | 71 |
| SG Singapore | #229 | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | — | Kenny | 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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register). 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)
Kenny 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.
Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Coinnigh ‘descendant of Coinneach’, an Old Irish personal name equivalent to Scottish Kenneth. This was borne by a 6th-century monk and saint who gave his name to the town of Kilkenny ‘church of Coinneach’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
possibly an Anglicized form of Gaelic O Cionaodha ‘descendant of Cionaodh’, a personal name of unexplained etymology.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Variant of Canice. Kerill [Co/real/] (m) An Irish name which has been anglicised as Cyril.
as a nameIrish first names
In English, A diminutive of the male given name Kenneth.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, Kenny är en skotsk smekform till → Kennet. Namnet kan även vara en angliserad form av det gäliska namnet Cainneach. Runt förra sekelskiftet användes det även som kvinnonamn i Sverige tillsammans med andra namn som slutade på -y (→ Jenny).
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
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)
- Kenny Clarkeb. 1914USAmerican jazz drummer (1914–1985)
- Kenny Bakerb. 1934GBBritish actor and musician (1934–2016)
- Kenny Ortegab. 1950USAmerican television and film director, producer, choreographer
- Kenny Dalglishb. 1951GBScottish association football player and manager
- Kenny Anthonyb. 1951LCPrime Minister of Saint Lucia
- Kenny Johnsonb. 1963USAmerican actor
- Kenny Harrisonb. 1965USAmerican triple jumper and long jumper
- Kenny Chesneyb. 1968USAmerican country musician
- Kenny Andersonb. 1970USAmerican basketball player (born 1970)
- Kenny Blankb. 1977USAmerican 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)
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)
Attested in 102 sources across 55 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 17K | #2,077 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 17K | #1,972 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 16K | #2,143 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 43 | #28,921 |
Reference works 6
- 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)
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 are other forms of the name Kenny?
- In the etymology graph, Ken, Kennet and Cainneach are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Kenneth and Kennith.
- Is Kenny a male or female name?
- Kenny 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 does the name Kenny mean, and where does it come from?
- from Gaelic Cionaodha, a personal name of unknown origin; also from Irish Gaelic Ó Coinnigh, descendant of Coinneach, literally “handsome” Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Kenny?
- A machine transcription gives /kɛni/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kenny have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 268 thousand people named Kenny in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kenney.
- How common is the name Kenny?
- In the United States, the national register counted 51,666 people named Kenny in 2020, about 1 in 6.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Kenny compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Kenny is the 229th most common given name of 52,448 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kenny?
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/kennyThe 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, “Kenny” — the 229th most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.