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Kenai vs Kennedy

American parents have registered 101,120 Kennedys since 1880, against 2,465 Kenais. Kennedy is still ahead, with 3,019 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kenai against Kennedy, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kenai Kennedy

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

Kennedy has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1912 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Kenai had 383 and Kennedy had 3,019.

Side by side

  Kenai Kennedy
Total US births 2,465101,120
Most in one year 3834,688
Babies in 2025 3833,019
Estimated living today 2,400100,000
Median age today 413
Peak year 20252015
Best rank 710th boys58th girls
Rank in 2025 710th85th
First recorded 19921912
Girls / boys 74 / 2,39193,663 / 7,457

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 Kennedys alive today are over 13; half the Kenais are over 4. That is 9 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 Kenai Kennedy
England and Wales 481,309
France 90 Kenaï150

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: Kenai and Kennedy.