Keagen
Masculine · “son of little Aodh”
Keagen is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 1,047 boys against 22 girls since 1880.
Keagen is an Irish surname with a diminutive buried inside it. Irish patronymics regularly do this: the name means son of little Aodh, with the affectionate ending sitting between the word for son and the man himself, so the whole thing means grandson of somebody's little Hugh.
How old is the name Keagen?
Keagen first appears in US birth records in 1992 — 33 years ago. The typical Keagen alive today was born around 2008, making them about 17 years old. About 1,000 people named Keagen are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Keagen most popular?
Keagen peaked in 2008, reaching #1692 nationally. See the whole 2008 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Aodh, an Irish name older than Christianity there to Keagen
The story of Keagen
The layering is worth seeing. Start with a name: Aodh. Make it affectionate: Aodhagan, little Aodh. Then make a family name of it: Mac Aodhagain, son of little Aodh. Three separate operations, each of them adding a layer, and the result is a surname that carries a grandfather's nickname inside it like a stone in a fruit. English does the first and third and almost never the second — we have Johnson but not Johnnyson. The Irish habit produces long names and a great deal of information, most of which is lost the moment the name is written in English letters.
Meaning
son of little Aodh
Aodh was the name of a fire god before it was an ordinary Irish man's name, and it is usually anglicized as Hugh, which it has nothing to do with. The middle of the surname is a diminutive ending, the Irish equivalent of adding -kin or -let, and it was attached to the personal name before the patronymic was built on top. English surnames almost never work this way. Irish ones do it constantly, which is why so many of them are four syllables long in the original.
How the name formed
- Aodh, an Irish name older than Christianity there
- a diminutive ending makes it affectionate
- a patronymic is built on top of the diminutive
- English respells the result many ways
- Keagen appears in American records in the 1990s
Related forms: Mac Aodhagain · Keegan · Kegan
Pronouncing Keagen
KEE-gun
Two syllables, stress at the front. The second syllable has no identifiable vowel, which is why the record carries it written with an a and with an e.
Nicknames for Keagen
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1992
- Most boys named
- 200890 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1692reached in 2008
- Change vs 2023
- 0.0%5 in 2024, from 5
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Keagen in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Mac Aodhagain in Irish — related form
- Keegan in English — spelling variant
- Kegan in English — spelling variant
Keagens among us
people named Keagen are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Keagen sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- It is short, readable and needs no explanation to anybody.
- It works for a child of either sex, and the record carries it on both sides.
- The Irish surname behind it is genuinely old and the meaning is easy to tell.
- Keegan is the standard spelling and this one will be corrected constantly.
- The name means son of somebody, which is worth knowing before giving it to a daughter.
- It is closely dated to the last thirty years.
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Keagen
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Keagens are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,000 people named Keagen are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Keagen in 2025?
- Keagen is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Keagen with classmates?
- Keagen will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More K names
The most-given names starting with K, all years combined.
Kenneth#294 · Kevin#221 · Kyle#508 · Keith#800 · Karl#1585 · Kaleb#295 · Kurt#2258 · Kelly#1867
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Keagen? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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