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Kennady vs Kent

American parents have registered 69,493 Kents since 1880, against 1,850 Kennadys. Kent is still ahead, with 101 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kennady 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 2009, when Kennady had 103 and Kent had 122.

Side by side

  Kennady Kent
Total US births 1,85069,493
Most in one year 1082,592
Babies in 2025 19101
Estimated living today 1,80050,000
Median age today 1661
Peak year 20071962
Best rank 1,908th girls136th boys
Rank in 2025 6,116th1,654th
First recorded 19931885
Girls / boys 1,850 / 0171 / 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 Kennadys are over 16. That is 45 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 Kennady Kent
England and Wales 1882

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: Kennady and Kent.