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Kenly vs Kent

American parents have registered 69,493 Kents since 1880, against 644 Kenlys. Kent is still ahead, with 101 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kenly against Kent, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kenly Kent

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

Kent has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1885 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2011, when Kenly had 39 and Kent had 132.

Side by side

  Kenly Kent
Total US births 64469,493
Most in one year 452,592
Babies in 2025 14101
Estimated living today 64050,000
Median age today 1361
Peak year 20141962
Best rank 3,778th girls136th boys
Rank in 2025 10,107th1,654th
First recorded 19811885
Girls / boys 541 / 103171 / 69,322

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 Kents alive today are over 61; half the Kenlys are over 13. That is 48 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 Kenly Kent
France 6550

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: Kenly and Kent.