Humanverse

Kent vs Kenzie

American parents have registered 69,493 Kents since 1880, against 21,874 Kenzies. But in 2025 it was Kenzie that was commoner, 371 babies to 101.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kent Kenzie

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

Of the 129 years in which either name was published, Kent for 100 years and Kenzie for 29 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Kent Kenzie
Total US births 69,49321,874
Most in one year 2,5921,330
Babies in 2025 101371
Estimated living today 50,00022,000
Median age today 6113
Peak year 19622014
Best rank 136th boys244th girls
Rank in 2025 1,654th736th
First recorded 18851918
Girls / boys 171 / 69,32221,391 / 483

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 Kenzies are over 13. That is 48 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

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

Country Kent Kenzie
England and Wales 823,441
Scotland 41,013
France 50190
Northern Ireland 9173

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: Kent and Kenzie.