Kenyon
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Kenyon is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: person from Kenyon, Lancashire, perhaps shortened from Old Welsh Cnuc Einion, “Einion’s mound”.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 10K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 16K
- CACanada≈1 in 22K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 399 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 9.4K (inferred from the name graph)
12,891 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Jamaica, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
person from Kenyon, Lancashire, perhaps shortened from Old Welsh Cnuc Einion, “Einion’s mound”
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kenyon 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 | — | 12,891 | 1 in 26K | 13K | Kenyon | 399 |
| GB United Kingdom | #975 | ≈6,400 est. | ≈1 in 10K | listed | Kenyon | 214 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 22K | 1 | Kenyon | 107 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 40K | — | Kenyon | 9 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 16K | 1 | Kenyon | 152 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈330 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Kenyon | 16 |
| JM Jamaica | #510 | ≈300 est. | ≈1 in 9.4K | — | Kenyon | 5 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈280 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Kenyon | 42 |
12,891 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 — Surname Frequency 2010; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. 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)
Kenyon 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, from Kenyon, Lancashire; first attested Robert de Kenien 1212 Fees (Lancashire)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, near Warrington, which is of uncertain etymology. There was formerly an ancient burial mound there and Ekwall has speculated that the name is a shortened form of a Brit, name composed of the elements cruc mound (see Crich) + a personal name cogn. with Welsh Einion ‘Anvil’. The earliest known ancestor of bearers of this name was Jordan Kenyon, lord of the manor of Kenyon in the ijth cent.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
habitational name from a place near Warrington, which is of uncertain etymology. There was formerly an ancient burial mound there and Ekwall has speculated that the name is a shortened form of a British name composed of the elements criic ‘mound’ + a personal name cognate with Welsh Einion (see Eynon).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Coinm ‘son of Coinin', a byname based on a diminutive of cano ‘wolf’, also Anglicized as Cunneen. The similarity to coinm ‘rabbit’, a later borrowing, has also caused it to be ‘translated’ as rabbit.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, John, US phonetician
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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)
- Frederic G. Kenyonb. 1863GBBritish palaeographer and classical scholar (1863–1952)
- William Squire Kenyonb. 1869USAmerican politician (1869–1933)
- Charles Kenyonb. 1880USAmerican screenwriter (1880–1961)
- Dorothy Kenyonb. 1888USAmerican politician (1888–1972)
- Doris Kenyonb. 1897USAmerican actress (1897–1979)
- Kathleen Kenyonb. 1906GBBritish archaeologist (1906-1978)
- Sandy Kenyonb. 1922USAmerican actor (1922–2010)
- Cynthia Kenyonb. 1954USUS molecular biologist
- Carol Kenyonb. 1959GBBritish singer and musician
- Matt Kenyonb. 1977USnew media artist
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 38 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 13K | #2,796 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 13K | #2,635 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 12K | #2,866 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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 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 Kenyon mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Kenyon, Lancashire, perhaps shortened from Old Welsh Cnuc Einion, “Einion’s mound” Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Kenyon have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 13 thousand people named Kenyon, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kenyon.
- How common is the name Kenyon?
- In the United States, the national register counted 12,891 people named Kenyon in 2010, about 1 in 26 thousand residents.
- How common is Kenyon compared with other names?
- In Jamaica, Kenyon is the 510th most common surname of 50,451 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kenyon?
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/kenyonThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Kenyon” — the 510th most common surname in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.