Kenneth

755,679 people in America carry this name — ranked #43 of 923.

A name of the post-war decades.

Say it KEH nihth

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

K EH1 N IH0 TH — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 755,679 2020 Census
  • Rank #43 Very common
  • Per 100,000 250.2 about 1 in 439 people
  • As a surname 1,033 ranked #25,124 the other way round

Where Kenneth comes from and what it means

Celtic in origin, reading literally as “comely”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

How often Kenneth has been given

1,282,888 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1957, with 28,122 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50s 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1950s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

What goes well after Kenneth

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Kenneth Kevin — same opening
  • Kenneth Kyle — same opening
  • Kenneth Henry — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Going quiet

Kenneth has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Baby Boomers.

Is Kenneth used for boys or for girls?

99.9% men
823 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

The states where Kenneth is most common

In the District of Columbia the name is given 1.8 times as often as it is across the country.

  • the District of Columbia ×1.8
  • Mississippi ×1.5
  • Alabama ×1.5
  • Rhode Island ×1.5
  • South Carolina ×1.5

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

How to spell Kenneth

Kenneth is how 94% of them spell it — 807,345 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 77.5%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 13.3%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 3.7%
  • Two or more races — 2.7%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 2.1%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.7%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Try it Birth Plan Worksheet

Tick what matters, print it, hand it over. Nothing is stored anywhere.

Open Birth Plan Worksheet on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Celtic origin