Kendra
Feminine
Kendra is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 98,438 girls against 350 boys since 1880.
Kendra arrived in English as one of a small family of names built around the older Kendrick, and it has been in steady American use for the better part of a century. Two syllables, a hard opening K and a soft landing — it reads aloud exactly as it is written, which not every name of its era can claim.
How old is the name Kendra?
Kendra first appears in US birth records in 1936 — 89 years ago. The typical Kendra alive today was born around 1990, making them about 35 years old. About 95,500 people named Kendra are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Kendra most popular?
Kendra peaked in 1987, reaching #77 nationally. Today it ranks #849, 772 places below that high. See the whole 1987 chart.
Kendra appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From Cynwrig to Kendra
The story of Kendra
The Kendrick surname behind it is genuinely old, carried in Wales and in England from the medieval period onward and later spread through emigration to North America. Kendra itself is a much younger, English-speaking name: it belongs to the group of feminine forms that grew out of established surnames and men's names in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It took hold in the United States rather than in Britain, and it rose alongside other Ken- names in American use. Today its bearers are concentrated in the large states — Texas, California and New York — which is what a name spread by ordinary popularity rather than by one region looks like.
Meaningscholars disagree
Most likely a feminine counterpart to Kendrick
Two explanations compete, and both are taken seriously. One traces Kendra through the surname Kendrick to the Welsh personal name Cynwrig, or to the Old English Cyneric, built from elements meaning royal or kin and ruler or power. The other treats it as an English-language coinage of the modern era, formed from the Ken- opening plus the -dra ending shared with Sandra and Sondra. Neither has won outright.
How the name formed
- Cynwrig
- Kendrick
- Kendra
Related forms: Kendrick · Cynwrig · Kendria
Pronouncing Kendra
KEN-druh
Stress on the first syllable. There is only one way to say it in American English, and the spelling gives it away on sight.
Nicknames for Kendra
High
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
- 1936
- Most girls named
- 19873,841 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #77reached in 1987
- Change vs 2023
- −16.0%320 in 2025, from 381
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.
Kendra in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Kendrick in English — related form
- Cynwrig in Welsh — related form
- Kendria in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, New York.
Kendras among us
people named Kendra are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 5,023 born in 2025 was named Kendra
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Anita test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Kendra's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Anita climbed just as high around 1963, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Anita's path sketches the road Kendra is walking now.
Kendra is coming down from a big peak (#77 in 1987). This is the stretch of the cycle where a name starts to sound like the decade it ruled.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Kendra is headed
Kendra should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Kendra beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Kendra in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spelled the way it sounds: two syllables, no silent letters, no competing pronunciations to correct.
- Familiar to almost everyone in the US without being a name a child will share with classmates.
- Sits in a recognizable family — Kendrick, Ken, Kenna — so it never needs explaining from scratch.
- Strongly represented among adults today, which means the name reads as established rather than newly invented.
- The origin is genuinely unsettled. If a clean, quotable meaning matters to you, Kendra will not give you one — what it offers instead is two plausible histories.
- It carries a clear generational stamp: most Kendras in the US are grown women, so on a small child the name may read as borrowed from an older cohort. Names on that part of the curve often come back.
- Kendall, Kenzie and Kennedy are all in circulation and share its opening, so expect the occasional mishearing or wrong guess on a first meeting.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
Someone added a name to your list
Kendra
Feminine · #849 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Kendras are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 95,500 people named Kendra are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Kendra in 2025?
- Kendra ranks #849 among US girl names in 2025, with 320 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Kendra?
- About 1 in every 5,023 US girls born in 2025 was named Kendra — 320 in all.
- Will my child share the name Kendra with classmates?
- Kendra will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Kendra
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Magdalena#849 · Lea#848 · Chelsea#851 · Kelly#851 · Indigo#853 · Paula#853 · Anaiah#853 · Ensley#844
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Kendra? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Kendra and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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