Kenan
given name · Latin script
Meaning: A biblical name of Hebrew origin meaning 'possession' or 'acquisition' (Biblical Names Compiled Database)
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 48 countries · latest register: SSA, 2025
/cen̪an̪/(machine-generated) Turkish · model-generated
Kenan is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Türkiye than in any other country. In Bosnia & Herzegovina it is the 76th most common given name. Kenan is also written Кэнан in Cyrillic, เค่อน่าน in Thai and ქენან in Georgian.
- BABosnia & Herzegovina≈1 in 450few records(inferred from the name graph)
- AZAzerbaijan≈1 in 500
- TRTürkiye≈1 in 750
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Kenan itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Türkiye (inferred from the name graph)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 200 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 448 (inferred from the name graph)
≈110,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Bosnia & Herzegovina, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Kenan in other scripts: Cyrillic, Thai and Georgian
(measured from records)Locally spelled Qenan in XK Kosovo.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
How to pronounce Kenan
- Turkish:/cen̪an̪/(machine-generated) model-generated
Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)A biblical name of Hebrew origin meaning 'possession' or 'acquisition'.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Biblical Names Compiled Database
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Kenan, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Kenan counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TR Türkiye | #156 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 749 | — | Kenan | 135 |
| AZ Azerbaijan | #237 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 497 | — | Kenan | 37 |
| BA Bosnia & Herzegovina | #76 | ≈7,100 est. | ≈1 in 448 | 53 | Kenan | 33 |
| SY Syria | #625 | ≈5,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.9K | — | Kenan | 27 |
| US United States | — | 3,949 | 1 in 84K | 3.8K | Kenan | 200 |
| CY Cyprus | #335 | ≈730 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Kenan | 18 |
| XK Kosovo | #429 | ≈640 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | 953 | Qenan | 3 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search); the ba-fzs-newborn-names register. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Kenan is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Derived from a Hebrew root meaning 'possession', 'smith', or 'lament'.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
As a member of the Sethite genealogy, Kenan represents the preservation of the righteous lineage from Adam to Noah.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
In French, From Hebrew Qenan/Cainan, possibly 'possession' or 'smith'.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In Turkish, Canaan
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Turkish, 1. Vaat edilmiş ülke.2. Cennet.3. Hazreti Yakup'un ülkesi, Filistin.
as a wordTDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Kenan Evrenb. 1917TRPresident of Turkey (1917–2015)
- Kenan Thompsonb. 1978USAmerican comedian and actor (born 1978)
- Kenan Yıldızb. 2005TRTurkish association football player (born 2005)
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them
(machine-generated)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)89 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 48 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- How do you pronounce Kenan?
- In Turkish /cen̪an̪/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Is Kenan a male or female name?
- Kenan is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: United States (Census Bureau, 2020), France (INSEE, 2024), Kosovo (ASK Kosovo) and Norway (SSB), among others.
- What does the name Kenan mean, and where does it come from?
- A biblical name of Hebrew origin meaning 'possession' or 'acquisition'. Recorded by Biblical Names Compiled Database.
- What are other forms of the name Kenan?
- In the etymology graph, Kainan, Cainan and Qenan are forms of the same name in other languages.
- Which countries have the most people named Kenan?
- Mondonomo estimates about 114 thousand people named Kenan in Türkiye, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kenan. After it come Azerbaijan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Syria and United States; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Kenan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,949 people named Kenan in 2020, about 1 in 84 thousand residents.
- How common is Kenan compared with other names?
- In Türkiye, Kenan is the 156th most common given name of 264,080 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kenan?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kenanThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Kenan” — the 156th most common given name in Türkiye. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.