Humanverse

Kennet vs Kent

American parents have registered 69,493 Kents since 1880, against 214 Kennets. Kent is still ahead, with 101 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kennet against Kent, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kennet Kent

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Kent has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1885 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2024, when Kennet had 7 and Kent had 104.

Side by side

  Kennet Kent
Total US births 21469,493
Most in one year 132,592
Babies in 2025 under 5101
Estimated living today 18050,000
Median age today 3861
Peak year 19591962
Best rank 2,295th boys136th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked1,654th
First recorded 19381885
Girls / boys 0 / 214171 / 69,322

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Kents alive today are over 61; half the Kennets are over 38. That is 23 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Kennet Kent
Norway 2592,605

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Kennet and Kent.