Kwame
About 3,993 American babies have been named Kwame since 1960, most of them around 1990. In 2025 it ranked 2,941st. About 3,800 Kwames are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 33.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Kwame boys named Kwame
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 3,993
- Estimated living today
- 3,800
- Median age today
- 33
- Peak year
- 1990
- Best rank
- 583rd
- Rank in 2025
- 2,941st
- First recorded
- 1960
- Girls / boys
- 38 / 3,955
How old the living Kwames are
born that year still alive today
Of the 3,993 babies given the name since 1960, about 3,800 are alive — 95 in every hundred. Roughly 830 of them are children and 5 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1992 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 Akan
An ancient and traditional Akan day-name meaning "born on Saturday". Popularized in the 1960s when Kwame Nkrumah was the Prime Minister of Ghana.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Kwames
- Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972)Ghanaian politician
- Kwame Anthony Appiah (born 1954)British-American philosopher and writer
- Kwame Brown (born 1982)American basketball player
- Kwame Ayew (born 1973)Ghanaian footballer
- Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong (born 1974)Ghanaian alpine skier
- Kwame Kilpatrick (born 1970)American politician and football player
- Kwame Karikari (born 1992)Ghanaian footballer
People named Kwame with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Kwame is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Kwame is most concentrated in New York (4.4×), the District of Columbia (3.0×), Maryland (3.0×), Georgia (2.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1990
The most popular boys’ names the year Kwame peaked:
Kwame elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Kwame | 361 | 733rd |
| France boys | Kwame +1 spelling | 20 | 3,525th |
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.
Kwame by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 2 | 546th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Kwame 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 | Kwame | 10 | 41 |
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
Kwame 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.