girls:
672 births since 1972
#5044 (12th percentile)
boys:
1.7k births since 1957
#3015 (34th percentile)
overall:
2.4k births since 1957
#5457 (29th percentile)
The name Kiernan is the #5,457 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 2,359 recorded births since 1957. This represents the 29.5% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 29.5% of all names). For boys, it ranks #3,015 (34.2% percentile) for all time with 1,687 births since 1957. For girls, it ranks #5,044 (11.7% percentile) for all time with 672 births since 1972.
Kiernan first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1957 (1957 for boys and 1972 for girls). Birth data for Kiernan is available in 51 out of the 67 years between 1957 and 2023 (49 years for boys and 41 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 Kiernan has been given predominantly to boys, with 71.5% of all recorded births being male. In 2023, 70.7% of babies named Kiernan were boys.
For boys, Kiernan reached its peak popularity in 2008, achieving the 7.9% percentile (ranked #835) with 35 births per million. The name was most common in 2010, with 36 births per million (ranked 7.8% percentile). Since reaching a high point around 2021, the popularity of this name for boys has been declining. Currently, Kiernan ranks #887 for boys (2.6% percentile) with 16 births per million, which is 44.0% of its peak share of births.
For girls, Kiernan reached its peak popularity in 2002, achieving the 3.2% percentile (ranked #865) with 17 births per million. The name was most common in 2002, with 17 births per million (ranked 3.2% percentile). Since reaching a high point in 2021, the popularity of this name for girls has been declining. Currently, Kiernan ranks #940 for girls (0.7% percentile) with 7 births per million, which is 39.8% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Kiernan".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Kiernan.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Kiernan", 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 Kiernan.
Our model has identified 2 different pronunciations for the name Kiernan. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 76.9% confident that Kiernan is pronounced as KIHR-nuhn, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is KEAR-nuhn, at 23.1% 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 Kiernan? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Kiernan. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Kiernan, 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 IH1 R N 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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