Kente
given name · Latin script
Meaning: A type of fabric made of interwoven cloth strips, native to Ghana
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Kente is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States≈1 in 3.6M(inferred from the name graph)
- GHGhana≈1 in 554K
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 3.1M
carrying the name, as Mondonomo estimates it from our sources: no national register counts it in these countries. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 65 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 554K (inferred from the name graph)
≈92 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Ghana, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A type of fabric made of interwoven cloth strips, native to Ghana.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kente 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 | ≈92 est. | ≈1 in 3.6M | 6 | Kente | 65 |
| GH Ghana | ≈53 est. | ≈1 in 554K | — | Kente | 5 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈41 est. | ≈1 in 5.3M | — | Kente | 10 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈18 est. | ≈1 in 3.1M | — | Kente | 12 |
| IT Italy | ≈9 est. | ≈1 in 7M | — | Kente | 1 |
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: SSA — National Baby Names (1880–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)
Kente is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Hungarian, third-person singular indicative past definite of ken
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Turkish, dative singular of kent
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In klw, power; energy
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)
- Willibard Kenteb. 1930TZbadminton administrator and executive
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 4 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1977 | 19 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1980 | 10 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1998 | 8 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1978 | 7 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2001 | 6 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1997 | 5 | — |
Reference works 1
- 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 Kente mean, and where does it come from?
- A type of fabric made of interwoven cloth strips, native to Ghana. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Is Kente a male or female name?
- Kente is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Kente have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 92 people named Kente in the United States, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kente.
- How common is the name Kente?
- Mondonomo estimates about 92 people in the United States have Kente as their first given name, about 1 in 3.6 million residents. No national register counts it there; the figure is ours, calibrated against the registers that do.
What do you want to know about Kente?
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/kenteThe 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, “Kente”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.