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Mckenna vs Mckinley

American parents have registered 44,491 Mckennas since 1880, against 22,884 Mckinleys. Mckenna is still ahead, with 758 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mckenna against Mckinley, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mckenna Mckinley

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

Of the 136 years in which either name was published, Mckinley for 95 years and Mckenna for 41 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

Side by side

  Mckenna Mckinley
Total US births 44,49122,884
Most in one year 1,804934
Babies in 2025 758423
Estimated living today 44,00018,000
Median age today 1813
Peak year 20022014
Best rank 177th girls379th girls
Rank in 2025 410th712th
First recorded 19721890
Girls / boys 44,308 / 18313,098 / 9,786

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 Mckennas alive today are over 18; half the Mckinleys are over 13. That is 5 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 Mckenna Mckinley
England and Wales 179107
Scotland 117

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: Mckenna and Mckinley.