Kendal
Kendal is a girl's name that peaked in 2004, when it was the 513th most popular in the United States. Its origin is given as a surname. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 3,249th. About 13,000 Kendals are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 23.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Kendal boys named Kendal
Girls and boys called Kendal
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Kendal crossed from boys to girls in 1982, and has stayed there for 7 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 70% girls, and in 2025 it was 80%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 74 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 13,800
- Estimated living today
- 13,000
- Median age today
- 23
- Peak year
- 2004
- Best rank
- 513th
- Rank in 2025
- 3,249th
- First recorded
- 1915
- Girls / boys
- 9,123 / 4,677
How old the living Kendals are
born that year still alive today
Of the 13,800 babies given the name since 1915, about 13,000 are alive — 96 in every hundred. Roughly 3,900 of them are children and 360 are 65 or over. 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 a surname
From Old English Cent + dæl = "valley of the river Kent".
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Where Kendal is most common
Across the country Kendal is recorded 2.30 times per 100,000 births, so these are the states above that line. Only states with 50 or more recorded Kendals are ranked here: below that a handful of births makes a rate that moves on chance alone.
Counts favour the big states, which is why the same few lead this list for almost every name.
Births recorded in each state since 1910. A name given to fewer than five babies in one state in one year is not published, so a name's quietest states are missing from this rather than showing zero. Browse names by state.
Names of 2004
The most popular girls’ names the year Kendal peaked:
Kendal elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Kendal | 405 | 848th |
| France boys | Kendal | 235 | 1,694th |
| Scotland girls | Kendal | 179 | 335th |
| England and Wales boys | Kendal | 58 | 2,435th |
| France girls | Kendal | 25 | 7,668th |
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.
Kendal 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 | Kendal | — | 6 |
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
Kendal 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.