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Kena vs Kendra

American parents have registered 98,788 Kendras since 1880, against 1,911 Kenas. Kendra is still ahead, with 320 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kena against Kendra, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kena Kendra

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Kendra has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1936 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1964, when Kena had 33 and Kendra had 392.

Side by side

  Kena Kendra
Total US births 1,91198,788
Most in one year 703,863
Babies in 2025 13320
Estimated living today 1,80095,000
Median age today 4335
Peak year 19751987
Best rank 1,459th girls77th girls
Rank in 2025 7,885th849th
First recorded 19471936
Girls / boys 1,848 / 6398,438 / 350

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Kenas alive today are over 43; half the Kendras are over 35. That is 8 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Kena Kendra
France 301,595
England and Wales 6844

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Kena and Kendra.