Ken
The boy's name Ken has been in the national records since 1900, with 33,043 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 3,240th. About 24,000 Kens are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 62.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Ken boys named Ken
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 33,043
- Estimated living today
- 24,000
- Median age today
- 62
- Peak year
- 1960
- Best rank
- 177th
- Rank in 2025
- 3,240th
- First recorded
- 1900
- Girls / boys
- 30 / 33,013
How old the living Kens are
born that year still alive today
Of the 33,043 babies given the name since 1900, about 24,000 are alive — 72 in every hundred. Roughly 1,200 of them are children and 8,900 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1963 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.
Notable Kens
- Ken Kesey (1935–2001)American novelist
- Ken Thompson (born 1943)American programmer and computer scientist, co-creator of the Unix operating system
- Ken Loach (born 1936)English film director and screenwriter
- Ken Follett (born 1949)British novelist
- Ken Watanabe (born 1959)Japanese actor
- Ken Naganuma (1930–2008)Japanese association football player and manager
- Ken Noritake (1922–1994)Japanese association football player
- Ken Saro-Wiwa (1941–1995)Nigerian social rights activist
People named Ken with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Ken is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Ken is most concentrated in Hawaii (3.8×), Washington (2.6×), Oregon (2.3×), California (2.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1960
The most popular boys’ names the year Ken peaked:
Ken elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway boys | Ken | 1,602 | 125th |
| France boys | Ken | 1,345 | 331st |
| Belgium boys | Ken | 251 | 179th |
| England and Wales boys | Ken | 187 | 1,786th |
| Ireland boys | Ken | 20 | 274th |
| Scotland boys | Ken | 9 | 284th |
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.
Ken: rank by region
In 2003, Ken was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Ken | 640 | 6 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Ken by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 3 | 490th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Ken among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Ken | 176 | 227 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Ken 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.