Kana
Kana reached its high-water mark in 2006 at number 5,086, and has been recorded 890 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 8,362nd. About 870 Kanas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 23.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Kana boys named Kana
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 890
- Estimated living today
- 870
- Median age today
- 23
- Peak year
- 2006
- Best rank
- 5,086th
- Rank in 2025
- 8,362nd
- First recorded
- 1956
- Girls / boys
- 872 / 18
How old the living Kanas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 890 babies given the name since 1956, about 870 are alive — 98 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2002 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Japanese
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Kanas
- Kana Kitahara (born 1988)Japanese association football player
- Kana Osafune (born 1989)Japanese association football player
- Kana Hanazawa (born 1989)Japanese voice actress
- Kana Asumi (born 1983)Japanese voice actress and singer
- Kana Ueda (born 1980)Japanese voice actress
- Kana Nishino (born 1989)Japanese singer
- Kana Ichinose (born 1996)Japanese voice actress
- Kana Kobayashi (born 1991)Japanese female talent
People named Kana with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Kana is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Kana is most concentrated in California (8.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2006
The most popular girls’ names the year Kana peaked:
Kana elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Kana | 13 | 3,174th |
| France girls | Kana | 5 | 5,488th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Related names
Kana against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.