Kent
Kent is a boy's name that peaked in 1962, when it was the 136th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 1,654th. About 50,000 Kents are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 61.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Kent boys named Kent
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 69,493
- Estimated living today
- 50,000
- Median age today
- 61
- Peak year
- 1962
- Best rank
- 136th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,654th
- First recorded
- 1885
- Girls / boys
- 171 / 69,322
How old the living Kents are
born that year still alive today
Of the 69,493 babies given the name since 1885, about 50,000 are alive — 72 in every hundred. Roughly 2,300 of them are children and 19,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1964 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin a surname
from Old English Cent, from Latin Cantium, from cel-bry *Cantio (compare Old Irish céite), from Proto-Celtic *kantos (“corner, rim”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Kents
- Jeffrey Kent Eugenides (born 1960)novelist, short story writer, academic
- Kent Beck (born 1961)American software engineer
- Kent Nielsen (born 1961)Danish footballer
- Kent Conrad (born 1948)American politician
- Kent Bazemore (born 1989)American basketball player
- Kent Hovind (born 1953)American Christian fundamentalist and Young Earth Creationist
- Kent Karlsson (born 1945)Swedish footballer and manager
- Kent McCord (born 1942)American actor
People named Kent with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Kent is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Kent is most concentrated in Utah (5.4×), Idaho (4.1×), North Dakota (3.9×), Nebraska (3.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1962
The most popular boys’ names the year Kent peaked:
Kent elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway boys | Kent | 2,605 | 70th |
| England and Wales boys | Kent | 82 | 2,964th |
| France boys | Kent | 50 | 4,741st |
| Northern Ireland boys | Kent | 9 | 357th |
| Scotland boys | Kent | 4 | 259th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Kent among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Kent | 375 | 521 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Kent against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.