Kenan

given name · Turkish · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Kenan is a given name, most frequently recorded in Türkiye. In Azerbaijan it is the 49th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Turkish and French, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: A biblical name of Hebrew origin meaning 'possession' or 'acquisition'.

rarermore common
  • AZAzerbaijan1 in 568◐
  • TRTürkiye1 in 945
  • KGKyrgyzstan1 in 3K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈12K ●

across 13 countries

4 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
181 ●

599K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 4.0K ◐

Slovenia

Spellings & scripts●

KenanLatin · Turkish●572K records
КананCyrillic · Russian●5.1K records
ᲥენანGeorgian · Georgian●203 records
เค่อน่านThai · Thai●3 records

4 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Кенан in KZ Kazakhstan, UA Ukraine, MK North Macedonia, Kənan in AZ Azerbaijan, Канан in RU Russia and Kanan in PL Poland.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

A biblical name of Hebrew origin meaning 'possession' or 'acquisition'.

Sources 1

  • Biblical Names Compiled Database

Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Kenan is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
TR Türkiye#155572,187566K rec.—#100Kenan118
KG Kyrgyzstan#4487,98241 rec.——Kenan5
AZ Azerbaijan#497,7682.8K rec.—1.2KKənan32
RU Russia—7,5017K rec.—#1,745Канан93
SY Syria#6735,8507.7K rec.——Kenan25
US United States—3,9994K rec.1 in 83K4KKenan181
FR France—3,625△2 rec.1 in 19K3.6K—2
JO Jordan#4311,488106 rec.——Kenan21
GB United Kingdom—1,368676 rec.—listedKenan75
BG Bulgaria#8561,142849 rec.——Kenan41
BE Belgium—1,0961.1K rec.—5Kenan39
SE Sweden—1,073△209 rec.1 in 9.5K1.1KKenan25

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • Turkish572K83%
  • French23K3%
  • English21K3%
  • German20K3%
  • Arabic8K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Turkish571,96183%
French22,9973%
English20,8103%
German20,3963%
Arabic7,9851%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Kenan is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name58K records spelled Kenan27 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Germany, United States, Türkiye, Austria

    Languages: English, German, Western Frisian

    Also written Cianan, Cianán, K'Enan, Kènan, Kënan

  • French given name24K records spelled Kenan10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, Türkiye, Spain

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Kénan, Kenàn, Kenän, Kéñàn, Kèņáň

  • Spanish given name8.7K records spelled Kenan10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, Türkiye, United States, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Kenán, Kénan, Kënán, Kéñãñ, Kenân

  • Danish given name2.9K records spelled Kenan12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Denmark, Norway, United States, Sweden

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Swedish

    Also written Cainan, Ķenan, Kênân

  • a separate given name1.4K records spelled Kenan4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Türkiye, India, China

    Also written Ke-Nan, Ḳenan, Kenān

  • Malay given name1.3K records spelled Kenan10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, Indonesia, Türkiye, Kyrgyzstan

    Languages: Malay, Indonesian

    Also written St, Kéñäñ, Šť, Şť, Keñañ

  • Hungarian given name1.2K records spelled Kenan2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Slovenia, Türkiye, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan

    Also written Kénàn

47 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

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.

Over time●

02040601940196019802000202052 · 1988

Show as table
Kenan in ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search), Kosovo, 1929–2025
Yearrecords
19291
19311
19451
19461
19481
19501
19522
19531
19551
19561
19572
19583
19591
19601
19613
19622
19634
19644
19652
19675
19685
19692
19705
19711
19723
197313
197413
197510
197613
197715
197820
197919
198014
198123
198233
198347
198435
198537
198646
198747
198852
198932
199039
199131
199220
199323
199422
199531
199622
199717
199816
199916
200014
200117
20027
200311
20047
20058
200613
20075
20086
20099
201012
20119
201210
20135
20144
201511
201610
20179
20188
20197
20202
20213
20224
20234
20241
20254

XK ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) — 78 years between 1929–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1900195020002050Kenan Evren, b. 1917Kenan Bal, b. 1950Andrew Rose, b. 1959Kenan Doğulu, b. 1974Kenan İmirzalıoğlu, b. 1974Kenan Thompson, b. 1978Kenan Koçak, b. 1981Kenan Kodro, b. 1993Kenan Karaman, b. 1994Kenan Yıldız, b. 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).

Evidence●

Attested in 87 sources across 48 countries.

Official registers attesting Kenan
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20203.8K#4,639
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)20243.6K#262
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—1.1K#1,617
XK KosovoASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search)—953#738
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—870#1,797
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2020845—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010790#29,768
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020764#32,304
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000735#30,091
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—581#2,908
SI Sloveniastat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank)—546#579
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2025527#294

Reference works 6

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 663 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Kenan?
We estimate roughly 12 thousand people bear Kenan (counting its spellings and scripts) across 13 countries in our records.
In which country does Kenan have the most bearers?
Kenan is most frequently recorded in Türkiye, where it is most often spelled kenan.
How common is Kenan compared with other names?
In Türkiye, Kenan is the 155th most common given name of 294,597 given names recorded there.
Is Kenan a male or female name?
Kenan is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
What does the name Kenan mean?
Recorded meaning: A biblical name of Hebrew origin meaning 'possession' or 'acquisition'.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kenan

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

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 155th most common given name in Türkiye. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Kenan parses inside a full name →