girls:
10 births since 2000
#5706 (0th percentile)
boys:
951 births since 1970
#3641 (21st percentile)
overall:
961 births since 1970
#6778 (12th percentile)
The name Kenyan is the #6,778 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 961 recorded births since 1970. This represents the 12.4% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 12.4% of all names). For boys, it ranks #3,641 (20.6% percentile) for all time with 951 births since 1970. For girls, it ranks #5,706 (0.1% percentile) for all time with 10 births since 2000.
Kenyan first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1970 (1970 for boys and 2000 for girls). Birth data for Kenyan is available in 50 out of the 54 years between 1970 and 2023 (50 years for boys and 2 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 Kenyan has been given almost exclusively to boys, with 99.0% of all recorded births being male.
For boys, Kenyan reached its peak popularity in 2006, achieving the 6.3% percentile (ranked #820) with 27 births per million. The name was most common in 2006, with 27 births per million (ranked 6.3% percentile). Since reaching a high point around 2009, the popularity of this name for boys has been declining. Currently, Kenyan ranks #902 for boys (1.0% percentile) with 8 births per million, which is 27.9% of its peak share of births.
For girls, Kenyan reached its peak popularity in 2000, achieving the 0.0% percentile (ranked #897) with 3 births per million. The name was most common in 2000, with 3 births per million (ranked 0.0% percentile). There have been no recorded female births with this name since 2006.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Kenyan".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Kenyon. View all variations of Kenyon.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Kenyan", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 3 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Kenyon" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Kenyon..
Our model has identified 2 different pronunciations for the name Kenyan. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 87.5% confident that Kenyan is pronounced as KEH-nyuhn, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is KEE-nyuhn, at 12.5% confidence, with 2 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 Kenyan? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Kenyan. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Kenyan, 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 Y AH0 N) 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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