girls:
87.8k births since 1957
#401 (93rd percentile)
boys:
7.3k births since 1912
#1386 (70th percentile)
overall:
95.1k births since 1912
#709 (91st percentile)
The name Kennedy is the #709 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 95,082 recorded births since 1912. This represents the 90.8% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 90.8% of all names). For girls, it ranks #401 (93.0% percentile) for all time with 87,810 births since 1957. For boys, it ranks #1,386 (69.8% percentile) for all time with 7,272 births since 1912.
Kennedy first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1912 (1912 for boys and 1957 for girls). Birth data for Kennedy is available in 106 out of the 112 years between 1912 and 2023 (106 years for boys and 51 years for girls). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.
The name Kennedy has been given almost exclusively to girls, with 92.4% of all recorded births being female. Interestingly, until around 1994, the name was more popular for boys (86.2% boys from 1912 to 1993), but since then it has been more commonly used for girls (95.0% girls from 1994 to 2023).
For girls, Kennedy reached its peak popularity in 2014, achieving the 94.5% percentile (ranked #54) with 2,299 births per million. The name was most common in 2015, with 2,318 births per million (ranked 94.1% percentile). Since reaching a high point in 2018, the popularity of this name for girls has been declining. Currently, Kennedy ranks #70 for girls (92.7% percentile) with 1,755 births per million, which is 75.7% of its peak share of births.
For boys, Kennedy reached its peak popularity in 1964, achieving the 31.1% percentile (ranked #456) with 113 births per million. The name was most common in 1964, with 113 births per million (ranked 31.1% percentile). Since reaching a high point around 2016, the popularity of this name for boys has been declining. Currently, Kennedy ranks #812 for boys (10.9% percentile) with 57 births per million, which is 50.3% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Kennedy".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Kennedy.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Kennedy", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Kennedy.
Our model found one way to pronounce the name Kennedy. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 100.0% confident that Kennedy is pronounced as KEH-nuh-dee, which has 3 syllables.
If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Kennedy? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Kennedy. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Kennedy, please vote using the thumbs up button.
Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.
For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.
The raw pronunciations shown (like K EH1 N AH0 D IY0) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.
Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.
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